


Black and White and Red

by scapegrace74



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Film Noir, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 38,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scapegrace74/pseuds/scapegrace74
Summary: He just wanted to take photographs, and to discover some glimpse of beauty left in the world.  She wanted to find her sister.  They said it was a time of safety and prosperity, but that was a colourful re-imagining of the facts as they existed in black and white.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second full-length historical AU novel set in the X-Files universe. It is a homage to 1950s film noir, and I tried to remain true to that style throughout. It is also influenced, oddly, by the song Shutter Buggin by Buck 65. And finally, the entire work owes a huge debt to Prufrock's Love and their historical AU fics such as Moment in the Sun and Paracelsus. If this were a museum, and fanfic a painting, Moment in the Sun would be in the main gallery, and Black and White and Red would be in one of those side galleries, with a little white tag saying "in the style of..."
> 
> Certain chapters contain content that some people might find disturbing, and will be marked.

It was a chill night, with sleet blowing off the Anacostia River. Fox Mulder lifted the collar of his threadbare wool coat and lowered his watch cap to cover his reddened ears, but his hands remained bare. Chapped, and bare. The Leica screwmount that dangled from his neck required it.

Business was booming, unfortunately. With 1952 barely a month old, this was the fourth murder scene he’d been asked to photograph in the capital alone. Sometimes he was called in over the river by Arlington or Alexandria police as well. And Baltimore; Baltimore was a goldmine for those willing and able to stomach its filthy streets. The state of criminality being what it was, it was a wonder he wasn’t stuffing his mattress with a tidy little nest egg.

They said it was a time of safety and prosperity. America had entered World War II a recalcitrant loner and left the valedictorian, its infrastructure untouched and its industrial complex booming. Shiny new cars were parked in driveways of modern subdivisions that blossomed across the landscape. Neat wasn’t just a synonym for great, it was the order of the day. Neat. Tidy. Correct.

Mulder could sense a coming storm, however, hidden behind the sunburst horizon that blinded those living in the glorious here and now. There was something ugly brewing beneath the polite, manicured surface of society. Something the A-bomb and man’s capacity to condone the inhumane had unleashed. It spoke to him at night, colouring his dreams like flame.

“Alright, Mulder, it’s over to you.” The detective was a veteran, one of the few whose sallow jowls hadn’t turned a nasty shade of green when he first peered into the shallow ditch that ran the length of an abandoned towpath.

He primed his flash bulb, listening to its siren-like whine as he approached the dingy canvas tarp covering the victim’s body.

“Ready?”

He nodded, and the detective lifted the tarp. Bone white limbs rested at acute angles against the jet-black earth. The flash bulb exploded as he depressed the shutter, and in that moment, all he saw was red.

***

_Hanks of corkscrew curls heavy with clods of earth and dried leaves. A filigree Gaelic knot, hanging loose between the torn placket of a thin blouse. Skin scraped raw over knuckles and under fingertips, evidence of a valiant but futile struggle to survive. Lakes of dark purple bruises on both inner thighs, spread apart like the cracked spine of a hardcover book. A pale forearm with dew clinging to its fine hairs, both bones severed, leaving the wrist hanging like a severed marionette. A woman, barely twenty, lying in a ditch like a life-sized doll abandoned in the rain._


	2. Chapter 2

The old brownstone on Constitution Avenue had no doubt once been stately, but now it was merely tired. Slush accumulated in the stairwell beneath the front stoop and soaked into her leaky boots as Dana Scully lifted the brass knocker and let it drop loudly against the wood. A minute later, the door opened on the haggard face of a grey-haired woman in curlers.

“Yeah?” the woman snarled.

“I’m sorry, I’m looking for…” she paused to consult the classified ad in her hand, “M.F. Luder Photography. Am I at the right address?”

“Does I look like some arty fruitcake to you?”

“I’m terribly sorry, but this newspaper ad lists this address-“

“Well he ain’t here, is he? You need to go ‘round back.”

Before she could express her thanks, the door slammed in her face with a few curses and a muttered comment about “floozies coming by day and night”.

If the front entrance had been weary, the doorway facing the back alley was positively derelict. With no knocker, she removed her woolen mitten and rapped firmly against the peeling paint. This time the wait was much longer, and she was prepared to leave when the rusty hinges complained, and she found herself looking up at a tall, disheveled man who had clearly been asleep until she knocked.

“Hello, can I help you?” At least he was friendlier than the fishwife out front, even if his eyes were bloodshot and his raffish brown hair standing up in all directions.

“How do you do. My name is Dana Scully. I’m looking for M.F. Luder Photography?”

“Well, you’ve found us. Are you responding to my advertisement?” He gestured at the classified ad, still held in her small hand.

“Yes. May I come inside? It’s rather cold today.”

He opened the door further and they descended a steep staircase that led to a medium sized basement room cluttered with books, newspapers, stray dishes, camera equipment, clothing draped over every likely surface, a television playing an episode of that new show, Gangbusters, an overlarge leather sofa on which her host had obviously until recently been taking a nap, and, incongruously, a tropical fish tank.

“Errr, I’m sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting anyone today. Just let me clear off a place for you to sit.” He moved a few pairs of black trousers and an open bag of sunflower seeds, then dusted the seat of the kitchen chair with his palm. He extended a hand graciously, but she stood stiffly, still wearing her woolen tam and winter coat. Realizing this, the photographer shook his head in dismay.

“I’m not doing very well, am I? Let me take your hat and coat. I swear I’m usually slightly less muddle-headed. I was working all night, you see, and…”

“That’s perfectly fine. I can come back at a more convenient time, if you’d prefer.” She half-wished he’d accept her offer, so she could turn tail and run. The purpose of her visit seemed absurd, now that she had put her plan into action.

“No, please stay. I’ve already unearthed a chair. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to make myself a pot of coffee. Can I interest you in a cup, Miss… Scully, did you say it was?”

“Yes, Dana Scully. And you are….?” She finally despaired of this strange man introducing himself formally. Formality seemed foreign to him.

He chuckled nervously and extended his hand to shake. “Fox Mulder. Struggling artist by day, crime scene photographer by night, and currently flustered and embarrassed. Pleased to meet you, Miss Scully.”

“I don’t think you need that coffee, Mr. Mulder.” He grinned. Despite his disarray, she found herself strangely charmed. He put her at ease, which was remarkable considering the circumstances. There was a comforting blend of guilelessness and wit about him, and nothing predatory in his quicksilver eyes. If anything, he exuded an air of mild fraternal concern.

As the coffee pot chuckled warmly, her host eased his long limbs to the sofa seat and looked at her with anticipation. 

“So, now that we’ve been properly introduced, let’s discuss business,” he suggested.

“Well, as you guessed, I’m responding to your classified ad in _The Washington Star_. I understand that you are seeking models and that you pay one dollar for every photograph that you are successful in selling. I don’t have any experience, but I’ve been approached by photographers before, so…” she trailed off as he shifted uneasily on the cushions.

“I, err, that is to say, I’m not sure that you…”

“I’m a natural redhead,” she persevered, sounding a bit frantic, even to her own ears. “I was told that magazines pay a premium for that. And I look younger than my age – I’m actually twenty-three.”

“Are you a prostitute?” he blurted out.

“I beg your pardon?” He couldn’t possibly have said what she thought he just said.

“I asked if you're a prostitute.”

“I… of course not!” she replied, rising so suddenly to her feet that the wooden chair she’d recently occupied tipped over with a dramatic clatter.

“Miss Scully, I’m afraid there’s been an unfortunate misunderstanding. The pictures that I sell for one dollar apiece, well, they feature women in the nude, or at least partially disrobed. I assumed anyone responding to the ad would realize…”

The blood drained from her face. What had she done? Thank goodness she hadn’t mentioned this escapade to her sister. “Oh. Yes. I see now.” She began backing towards the stairs, eyes darting around the room as though she expected a naked woman to spring out from behind the sparse furniture.

“I’m very sorry to have embarrassed you in this way, Miss Scully. You must understand, I consider the human body the most sublime expression of beauty. The sculptures of Ancient Greece, Michelangelo, Botticelli – we acknowledge their artistic perfection. But take a photograph of a naked woman today, and they label it-“

“Pornography.”

“Exactly. And in my experience, the only women who are willing to expose themselves to that kind of social stigma are those who are already outcasts from the very portion of society who engage their services and buy my work.”

She’d never considered that perspective, having been raised by a conservative father and devout Catholic mother. Still, as desperate as she was to earn some much-needed money, there were some lines she was unwilling to cross, no matter how rational the justification. She carefully gathered her coat and hat and approached Mr. Mulder where he still sat on his sofa, looking abashed.

“I apologize for having woken you from your nap. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”

“It’s I who should apologize, Miss Scully. I wish things could be other than what they are, but…” He made to stand, but she held out her hand.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Mulder. I can see myself out. Good day.”

She trotted up the stairs and pulled hard against the stubborn hinges, walking out into the cold January wind without another word.

“Damn,” he said, leaning his head back against the black leather cushion and rubbing the bridge of his nose.


	3. Chapter 3

The landing in the south of France in late 1944 had been a false promise if ever there was one. With dexterous sleight of hand, the U.S. Seventh Army swapped sunlit beaches for the dank, dismal woods of the Vosges, and that is where he now crouched in crusty December mud. He tapped his fingers nervously against the metal of his cigarette case but couldn’t be bothered to root through his haversack for a lighter. Smoking was a forced habit that never really took hold, just something to do with his hands during the endless hours of waiting between carnage.

His infantry unit, the 42nd Rainbow Division, was tasked with breaching the Maginot Line so assiduously constructed by the French to keep the Germans out. It lay in the valley to the east, beyond the aptly named Ill River, across ground so concussed by mortar and bombing that it took a day to scramble five miles, assuming no-one was using you for target practice as you advanced. At twenty-two, Mulder was eight weeks out of boot camp and seriously re-considering his impetuous decision to enlist. 

The steel of his cigarette case was cold in his raw hands and his feet throbbed in his stiff leather boots. He just wanted to go home. Get warm. Marry Diana. Live a normal life without the menace of fascist tyranny or rifle fire or the ugly brutality inside the human heart. This is what adhering to your principles got you: frostbite.

An air-raid siren wailed. He glanced at the grey sky in confusion. There were no air-raid sirens at the front, yet it continued to bleat emphatically in his ear. He turned over, the warm leather of his sofa rubbing his cheek. The noise continued, but now he recognized it as a ringing telephone. It was dark outside again, and the police were calling. Whether he was in France during World War Two or Washington, D.C. in the present, victims needed someone to bear witness to their suffering.

***

Dr. Waterston stood at the front of the lecture theatre while several dozen nursing students settled into hard wooden chairs, their white stockings whispering beneath starched white uniforms. A reverent hush fell over the room. Once he was certain he had their undivided attention, he unfurled a large pull-down diagram behind him. There was a moment of shocked silence, then a wave of awkward tittering. In bright prismatic colours, the poster showed a cross-section of a male pelvis, complete with penis and testicles.

“Ladies, please,” the doctor began. “Now, I understand that most of you are unmarried, and as such are naturally unfamiliar with the specifics of masculine genitalia. However, in your selected profession you will be expected to pollute your innocence for the benefit of your patients. That being so, it falls to me to prepare you for the anatomical features you will encounter in your male patients. Now, the primary male sexual organ is the penis…”

As Dr. Waterston continued to speak, Dana glanced surreptitiously at her classmates. Some were blushing and looked decidedly uncomfortable, others were taking notes in their workbooks, hanging on their teacher’s every word. More than a few were struggling to hide knowing smirks. Women’s engagement in pre-marital sex was the great hypocrisy of the age: publicly censured and privately coveted. She might be a practicing Catholic, but Dr. Waterston’s visual prop wasn’t the first time she’d encountered the male reproductive organ.

She had already read this chapter in their course book, highlighting the key concepts and taking notes in her meticulous script. She let her attention drift to Dr. Waterston. He was dressed elegantly, with a neatly trimmed mustache and silver just beginning to dust his temples. Word amongst the duty nurses was that his marriage was loveless and that he had a wandering eye. Dana had been on the receiving end of an occasional lascivious glance early on, but she had stared right back until the doctor's eyes dropped guiltily away. That had been at the beginning of her senior year, and since then he treated her with casual indifference, despite her consistently superior grades.

Now Dr. Waterston had singled out Emily, a meek and mousy girl who quietly fawned over him. He left his podium and stood before her place in the front row.

“Now, Miss Sim, can you describe the anatomical characteristics of a tumescent penis for the class?”

“Ahhhh, I, ummm, there is increased blood flow to the…the, ummm…”

“The ummm, Miss Sim? I believe you mean the erectile tissue, which thickens and plumps, elongating the penis until it reaches a fully erect state.”

Poor Emily shrunk in her chair. A glance at Dr. Waterston’s well-tailored trousers confirmed Dana’s suspicions. He was becoming aroused discussing this otherwise taboo subject in front of a captive audience of young women, and quite possibly by humiliating one such student. 

She interjected, “But Dr. Waterston, isn’t it true that a man’s ability to reach and sustain full erection diminishes as he ages? That he loses his virility?” She blinked her eyes in a show of innocent curiosity.

Dr. Waterston sputtered a moment, taken off guard and forgetting about Miss Sim, which had been her object.

“I don’t believe that particular detail is covered in this week’s chapter, Miss Scully,” he finally managed to utter as her classmates grinned.

“I read ahead,” she smiled sweetly.


	4. Chapter 4

Mulder bounded up the stone steps of the local police precinct two at a time. He was carrying an envelope of black and white photos taken at last week’s crime scene in Anacostia. Normally the detective in charge would have been hounding him for them by now, and the fact that he wasn’t meant he hadn’t booked a suspect and didn’t expect to any time soon. Lady Justice might be blindfolded, but the Washington Police weren’t above peeking. Not every case got equal treatment.

He was known at the counter, so he merely lifted his envelope to the clerk, who nodded and then returned his attention to the distraught woman before him.

“Miss, like I told you yesterday, and the day before that, we are doing everything we can to find your friend.” The man’s voice bordered on rude dismissal. The police officers he knew where usually deliberately courteous with women, at least while they remained within earshot. The things they said in exclusively male company made even a libertine like Mulder blush.

The broad-shouldered woman gave no quarter, despite her obvious distress. “Yeah, I heard you, today yesterday and the day before that. But how can they be doing everything they can when they haven’t even come to our apartment to look for evidence? Or interviewed her friends? I know Christine real well, and it’s not like her to just disappear for a week without a word. She needs to be working. She needs the money.” The speaker had the husky voice of a two-pack a day smoker.

“Maybe she found herself a sugar daddy…” the clerk leered. Mulder couldn’t see the look the woman gave him, but it must have been something, because even the weathered old clerk couldn't meet her eyes.

“Look, I’ll tell Captain Skinner you were here, and when he has a moment, he’ll assign someone to come by and take your statement. This is a very busy precinct.”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing.”

The woman spun around, practically knocking into Mulder. He reached out instinctively and grabbed her by the upper arms to steady her, seeing her tear-streaked face for the first time.

He knew her.

“I’m sorry, Miss. Here, take this,” and he reached for his handkerchief. The women accepted it, blotting below her eyes where her mascara ran like soot down her cheeks.

“Thank you. You’re very kind. Heyyyyy…” she said, looking at him in wonder. “I know you. You’re that photographer.”

“That’s right. Fox Mulder. We met back in ’49, but I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Jasmine. My friend Sally brought me by your studio. You took some pictures of us, made us look really classy.”

Mulder bit his lip, uneasy with his two worlds colliding. And classy wasn’t exactly the word he would have used for those photographs, although he’d sold them for four dollars apiece. The way he figured, it was the classic capitalist formula of supply and demand. There was an underground market for those kinds of images, so someone was going to take them. He was a good photographer, neither a rapist nor a creep, and he paid a fair price to his models. It might as well be him.

“Well, Jasmine, it’s nice to…errr… see you again. You seem upset. I hope everything’s alright?”

Jasmine proceeded to tell him about her missing roommate Christine, another prostitute. Unfortunately, the police were less than expeditious in searching for a working girl, figuring that she’d finally fallen off the seedy underbelly of society like a discarded parasite, and good riddance.

“I wish it had been her with me that day at your studio. That way I’d have a picture of her that I could show around. You know, like one of those missing posters you see in the post office.”

“Why don’t you describe her to me? I work with a bunch of different police divisions, taking photographs of crime scenes. I could spread the word, keep an ear to the ground.” He wasn’t certain why he was volunteering his time, except that he knew if he didn’t, no-one would.

“You’d do that? Oh, Mr. Mulder, you’re a prince.”

Jasmine proceeded to describe her friend. She hadn’t spoken more than twenty words before Mulder got a terrible feeling in his belly, like he did on a boat in rough seas. He wasn’t going to have to ask around the other police stations. He had the answer, right in his hand. He opened the envelope, and carefully slid out the top photo. He had to let it drop to the ground so that he could catch Jasmine, who had fainted at the sight of her former roommate: pale and cold in the towpath mud. A terrible beauty, even in death.

***

_Sally wore her russet hair in a cascade of curls down her back, tips brushing the divots just above the ovoid moons of her ass. Jasmine was built like a stevedore, with chestnut pin curls and a mischievous smile. They lay, naked and sphinx-like, staring at each other across a foot of dark-hued blanket. A hand, Sally’s, cupped a dimpled chin, thumbnail just grazing Jasmine’s bottom lip. A blur of motion, legs and torsos rolling like a coiled rope, a crescent of hip and the darkest smudge of pubic hair. Two foreheads pressed together, hair interwoven, eyelash sunsets on freckled skin, mouths agape and yielding, a mere heartbeat before contact was made._


	5. Chapter 5

“What is this?” Samantha Scully complained, pushing her dinner listlessly around her bowl with a spoon.

“Hambone soup, boiled potatoes, stewed onion and cabbage,” her sister replied tersely from across the small kitchen table. They had this conversation, or some variation of it, every dinnertime. Between paying the rent, heating for their small apartment, and tuition for her nursing degree, there was precious little money left to put food on the table.

When their father had been killed in the Japanese bombing of the U.S.S. Arizona at Pearl Harbor, their mother received a widow’s benefit of ten thousand dollars. With two young daughters to raise alone, she did the best she could, but the money evaporated and was hard to replace. She took in the young children of other war widows while they worked as cooks, maids or secretaries, and at first they thought she'd caught one of their ever-present fevers. Then the headaches started, and one expensive hospital stay confirmed what they had dreaded: cancer. She’d been dead six months, and Dana still expected her to come bustling through the apartment door, her fair cheeks pink from climbing three flights of stairs.

“I’m pretty certain it was meals like this that made our people leave Ireland,” her sister groused, interrupting Dana’s melancholy thoughts.

“Samantha…”

“Honestly, Dana. This can’t continue. Either I go live with Uncle Charlie in Ohio…”

“Absolutely not. We've got to stick together, Sam. It’s what Ma wanted. I’ve only got one more semester until I finish my degree, and then I’ll get a full-time job at the hospital, and things will get easier,” she explained, praying that was how things would turn out.

“But we have to eat! The way I see it, we have three options. We can let go of the apartment…” Samantha didn’t sound like this was really a possibility, but Dana responded predictably anyway.

“And live where? Under a bridge?”

“Or you can postpone finishing university until we're back on our feet.” Samantha continued. Her sister shook her head.

“A registered nurse makes an excellent income... for a woman,” she argued.

“Or I can get a job working in a restaurant or tavern, where I can use my abundance of charm and wit to earn tips.” Samantha grinned in triumph.

Dana felt like she’d been trapped by her younger sister’s logic. If their parents were alive, they would never have countenanced one of their daughters working as a hostess in a drinking establishment. But the fact was, their parents weren’t alive, and tough decisions had to be made.

***

Mulder was leaning off his cot, easing his blistered heels into army-issue woolen socks, when his commanding officer entered his tent. He jumped to his feet, stumbled over his boots, and tried to right himself before any further mishap occurred. He saluted belatedly.

“At ease, Private Mulder,” Lieutenant Kersh growled, ignoring his general state of disorder and single bare foot.

“Sir.”

“How are you with a camera, Private?”

“Sir?”

“Corporal Wilson bought it yesterday. He was our unit photographer. Since you’re always standing around gawking and you can’t shoot for shit, I figure you’re the perfect replacement. Just take this camera and point it at things. Like a gun, except you’re aiming at your fellow soldiers, and I expect you not to miss.”

“Uh, okay. I mean, yes sir. Does, um, does this mean I don’t go up to the frontlines?” he asked, feeling the first faint flutter of optimism since he’d enlisted.

“Oh, you’ll be in the vanguard, Private Mulder. The only difference is, instead of bullets, we’re arming you with film stock. I’d say it’s a waste of an able-bodied soldier, but I’ve seen you fire a gun.”

Without any further pleasantries, the lieutenant left Mulder standing next to his cot, half-dressed, and holding a battered Contax rangefinder. Despite the lieutenant’s dire summary, he still felt a little ember of excitement kindle inside him.

***

_A long view down a steady decline towards a compact village. Squat, Teutonic buildings cross-hatched by dark wood and creamy wattle and daub smudged in soot. The elegant ellipsis of a stone bridge spanning eddies of muddy water. Sepia clouds, and in the middle distance, a Luftwaffe reconnaissance plane gulling the skies._

***

The thrum of conversation inside the Swampoodle Tavern died to a hushed whisper as a tall, self-important looking man and his retinue walked in. The owner hastened to greet them.

“Good evening, Senator. It’s wonderful to see you this evening. Your usual private room?”

The elderly gentleman scanned the pub like a bird of prey, a plume of cigarette smoke emitting from his thin lips. He hummed in a vaguely affirmative fashion.

“I’ll have your usual hostess prepare the room.” The barman made eye contact with Monica, one of the more senior wait staff and the Senator’s favourite, on account of her heavy Gaelic accent and absolute discretion. He jerked his head toward the back room, indicating its current occupants would need to decamp immediately.

“Noooo,” the older man elided, vision now fixed on an empty table near the bar where a redheaded barmaid was carefully balancing empty pint glasses on a tray. “I’d like that one.”

“Ah, she’s very new, Senator. Wouldn’t you prefer one of our more experienced hostesses, if you’re looking for a bit of variety-“

“Don’t question me, Murphy! I want that one. What’s her name?”

Not having foreseen this possibility, the proprietor hadn’t invented an alias for the new girl yet. He wasn’t even certain she was going to work out, although she certainly looked the part, with her clotted cream skin and hair the colour of dried blood. Her papers said she was twenty, but she looked all of fifteen. Exactly the type Spender favoured.

“Samantha. Samantha Scully. A veritable Irish lass. She just started with us this week.”

The old man’s eyes gleamed. “So much the better.”

***

Samantha came bursting in the front door, hair tousled by the strong February wind outside. She was practically dancing, she was so excited.

“Dana! The most amazing thing has happened! You’ll never guess.”

Samantha was prone to melodrama, but she had not been this animated since their mother had passed away. Her sister lifted the ladle she’d been using to stir their dinner stock and cocked her head.

“I was working my first shift at the Swampoodle, trying not to spill beer on anyone and to keep the orders straight, when the owner, Mr. Murphy, asked me to serve a group of important guests. They were seated in the back room. I’d never been back there before. It was so luxurious! And the customers… you’re never going to believe me… but they were politicians. I was terrified. Utterly petrified that I would say something stupid or trip and spill a drink of one of them. But one gentleman, clearly their leader because everyone deferred to him, was so kind to me. So polite. Genteel, even. And… you’ll never guess…” Here Samantha paused for dramatic effect.

“He tipped me fifty dollars!”

“What!!” Dana exclaimed, dropping the forgotten ladle to the floor with a clatter.

“Fifty dollars. I’ve got it right here. I tucked it into my… well, my underthings. I was certain someone would rob me as I walked home.” Samantha spun around and dug into her brassiere before turning back and flourishing five crisp ten dollar bills.

“I don’t understand,” Dana finally found her voice. “You served him twenty-five cent beer, and he tipped you fifty dollars? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, he wasn’t drinking beer. He had a dram of the finest Glen Grant whisky, but he just sipped on that. He mostly smoked and listened to his cronies talk. He had the most elegant cigarette lighter I’ve ever seen. I swear it was solid gold! And to think, he’s met President Truman. And Roosevelt! I know you think very highly of Roosevelt, Dana. God rest his soul.”

“What was this gentleman’s name?” Dana asked.

“I don’t know. Everyone called him Senator. Mr. Murphy says that he frequents the tavern regularly, and that I should be honoured that he requested me specifically to wait on him. Who knows? Maybe he’ll come back next week! All I know is that fifty dollars is more than I would earn all month bussing tables. And to think you didn’t want me working at the tavern, Dana. You said I’d be rubbing shoulders with drunks and vagrants, and here I am serving some of the most powerful men in Washington!”

“That’s what worries me. What exactly are a group of politicians doing drinking in a run-down Irish bar?”

“Phooey. You’re just grumpy because I proved you wrong. Whatever is that horrible smell?”

“It was going to be our supper, but now you’re taking us out to celebrate your windfall.” Dana smiled at last, dragged along by her sister’s exuberance. Maybe things were finally going to start going their way.


	6. Chapter 6

He drew his shoulders up and his head down into an aptly named turtleneck, trying to avoid being soaked by rain spilling over the eaves of the old warehouse. The door cracked open, and the elastic melody of jazz snuck out into the night. A suspicious eyeball appraised him, and then the door opened further, releasing a murky yellow triangle onto the wet pavement of the alley.

“Ah, Mulder, it’s you. Come on in. We’re having a little soirée.” The speaker was a gawkish man with lank blond hair and a pair of thick-rimmed black glasses. Mulder knew his real name was Ringo, but everyone called him The Beatnik. He played the double bass in a jazz trio and seemed to own only a single black and white striped shirt which stretched with unfashionable tautness across his hollow chest.

Inside the cavernous and mostly unfinished interior of the warehouse, an eclectic assortment of counter-culture types was lounging on second-hand or castaway furniture. A thick haze of smoke floated just above their heads. He recognized some of the guests from previous visits. Zealots and idealists from academia and the arts scene, most too earnest for their own good. There was a noticeable shortage of female party goers, which went a long way towards explaining Mulder’s popularity with his hosts.

“Mulder! My man!” The voice belonged to Melvin Frohike, the eldest of the three permanent occupants of this space, who looked more like a disreputable car salesman than an intellectual. He wore his green Army-issue jacket and wool gloves with the fingers cut off, his receding hairline exuding a Brylcream shine in the dim light.

“Hey Frohike. Quite the swinging joint you’ve got here. You sure the cops aren’t going to shut you down for running a den of iniquity,” Mulder teased his friend.

“Yeah yeah. We don’t all have the ladies falling over themselves to hang out with us like you, you big handsome lug.” Frohike batted his eyelashes and puckered his lips in mock flirtation, enjoying the typical banter that flowed between their little group.

“Thanks but no thanks, Frohike. I like my dames a little less grizzled. Not to mention taller.”

A quiet snort announced the arrival of the third of the clan, John Byers. Byers looked more like an accountant, and less like a hobo, which set him apart from the crowd. Unlike Frohike and the Beatnik, Byers had some kind of nine to five job, paid his taxes and was in all other outward respects an exemplary citizen. Mulder had never quite figured out his affiliation to the others, but he liked him all the same.

“That’s the fourth time you’ve been shot down tonight, Melvin,” Byers smirked.

“So seldom? It’s a good night for you, Frohike,” Mulder added, and all three burst into laughter while their friend pretended his feelings were hurt.

Mulder accepted a beer from Byers, after which he mingled with the other guests, joining and leaving many conversations that all held a similar theme – the United States government was adopting the very same authoritarian approach as the Fascist regimes it had fought against during World War II. Mulder half listened as these men, and a few women, railed against Senator McCarthy, censorship in Hollywood, the corruption of the free press, and the demonization of socialism. 

It wasn’t that Mulder disagreed that these things were happening, or that they were wrong. He just happened to think they were nothing new: old prejudices brought to light by the climate of the deepening Cold War with the Soviet Union. It was certainly no coincidence that so many of those accused of so-called un-American activities were black, Jewish, or known homosexuals.

Finally, the party began to wind down. Frohike motioned towards the back area, where cheap walls divided a small living space for the three men from the rest of the warehouse. Once in the kitchen, Mulder reached for an envelope hidden under his leather jacket, which he still wore. He spread a few dozen black and white glossy photographs on the rustic kitchen table.

“Oh, very nice, Mulder. You’ve outdone yourself,” Frohike complimented.

The shots were of a variety of young women, taken from different angles and degrees of proximity. Some were nude, while others wore provocative lingerie. Each was a study in composition, lighting, framing and subject matter. Mulder had a gift. An eye for beauty that defied the commonly accepted rules of artistic photography.

“I’ll take all of them,” Frohike announced, after reviewing each picture carefully with a connoisseur’s eye.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. I’m sure I can find a taker for every one of these. And hey, if I don’t, all the more for me, right?”

“You’re a real benefactor of the arts, you know that Melvin?”

“I’m something, alright,” he said as he counted out forty dollars from the thick roll of ones he kept in the inside pocket of his field jacket.

***

_Ivory laces zippered down the hourglass of a woman’s torso. She was bent forward so that her shoulders formed a longitudinal horizon near the top of the frame, her head invisible. The corset was pulled apart just enough to expose her ebony skin beneath. A final, conical flare of fabric opened over muscular buttocks, bisected by the architecture of garters, framing something dark and mysterious just out of sight._


	7. Chapter 7

The emergency room at Georgetown Hospital was bedlam. Patients stood, leaned, sat and lay in various states of infirmity as the nursing staff bustled in and out, combining triage and treatment.

Dana’s shift as a nurse’s aid was almost over, but she typically worked overtime, happy for any extra income she could earn. She had to be home to make breakfast for Samantha, who would otherwise eat cold cereal and drink yesterday’s coffee. Then she would normally sleep a few hours before her afternoon classes started. Today was Sunday, however, so the Scully sisters would go to mass.

“Come over here, Miss Scully,” the senior duty nurse she’d been shadowing all night called.

They stood before a seated man with long stringy hair and skin like a walnut, clearly a vagrant. He was listing severely to starboard and holding an animated conversation with himself. The smell of cheap liquor and unwashed clothes caused her to start breathing through her mouth.

“Tell me your observations of the patient, Miss Scully.”

“A middle-aged man presenting with symptoms of intoxication, most likely a transient,” she began.

“Very well, how do you judge his state of physical well-being?”

She bent slightly at the knees, trying to make eye contact with the man’s weaving face. Taking out her pen light, she shone it into both eyes, making the man wince and his voice raise in complaint. Donning her latex gloves, she carefully palpated under his jaw, feeling for swollen glands. Her patient looked up at her now with bleary, lovesick eyes.

“He seems healthy enough. No fever. Both eyes responsive to light. No outward sign of infection.”

“And would you admit him, given those preliminary findings?”

“I…, no. He just needs to sober up, and he doesn’t need a hospital bed to do that,” she asserted confidently.

Her adviser nodded silently, giving the man a thorough once over. She then reached for her pen and borrowed the clipboard containing the admission forms from a passing colleague.

“You’re admitting him?” Dana asked, confused.

“I am.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This man has likely suffered a stroke. See the one-sided drooping around the eye? The slurred speech? His inability to sit straight?”

“But he’s drunk!”

“Doubtless, but one diagnosis does not obviate another. Learn to look beyond your first impressions for the underlying truth, Miss Scully.”

Before she could respond, their patient groaned, lurched forward, and threw up all over her shoes.

The older nurse didn’t bother suppressing her smirk.

“The mop closet is down the hall on your left. Once you’ve cleaned up, you may go. Those shoes are going to need a thorough soaking.”

***

The inside of St. Patrick’s smelled of wet wool, dusty missals and the same perfume her grandmother had worn. It reminded Dana of childhood, before the war, when her family would fill their usual pew every Sunday: her father beside the aisle in his dress whites, then her mother, in a belted frock and practical shoes, then the Scully daughters in ascending order of age, scrubbed and buttoned into Sunday outfits that pinched and itched.

Now it was only Dana. Samantha normally joined her at Sunday mass, but when Dana arrived home early from the hospital that morning, their apartment was empty. Samantha was nominally an adult at twenty years of age, although Dana sometimes despaired of her sister ever growing up. There was something willfully puckish about her younger sister that was both beguiling and, at least to Dana’s practical mind, exasperating. Samantha had been their father’s darling, and his sudden death at Pearl Harbor when she was nine led her mother to relax her usual strict ways where she was concerned. Where Dana grew up quickly to relieve her mother’s burdens, Samantha seemed frozen in a kind of perpetual childhood.

As though conjured from her thoughts, her younger sister slid gracefully into the pew beside her just as Father McCue and his attendants began their stately processional down the nave.

“Where have you been?” Dana whispered out of the side of her mouth as the congregation stood.

“I had an errand to run this morning,” Samantha replied, opening her missal and peering around her at the assembled crowd. The Scully’s were nodding acquaintances with most of the Irish Catholic families in their neighbourhood, but that hadn’t been enough to save their mother from the hard toil of holding her family together once she became a war widow. Faith, hope and charity apparently abideth mostly in the abstract. When a real charitable need arose in their midst, people were very quick to look the other way. Casseroles and prayers were not going to pay her nursing tuition.

“You must have left very early, then.”

Samantha sniffed, staring now at the printed liturgy. Dana could always tell when she was hiding something – she wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“I’m here, aren’t I? Now hush. Mrs. McDougall is giving us the evil eye.”

Agnus Dei still echoed from the stone chancel as Dana rose to present herself for Communion. She had reached the aisle before she noticed her sister wasn’t behind her.

“Samantha?” she asked, confused.

“I haven’t been to confession yet,” her sister explained.

Dana was half-way to the alter before it occurred to her to wonder what recent sin her sister needed to expunge in order to receive the sacrament. By the time she returned to the pew, Samantha was no longer there to ask.


	8. Chapter 8

The sun was rising over the still waters of the Tidal Basin, casting long shadows along the bright green lawn. Mulder dismantled his flash apparatus, realizing he wouldn’t need it for once.

A trio of police officers stood nearby, discussing nothing of import in the way of most colleagues at the end of a long shift. Two were holding cigarettes, smoke coiling like ropes of mist in the morning air. Mulder raised his Leica and snapped off a shot. The noise of the shutter reached the men, and one turned to him.

“Do I look like a corpse to you, Mulder?” he groused.

“You don’t really want me to answer that, do you Kresge?”

The other cops guffawed.

“I could be six feet under, and this one could still get a rise out of me, you know what I mean boys?” The speaker was Pendrell, a younger cop still trying to assert himself in the pecking order of alpha males that made up the Washington Police force.

“Yeah, she’s a looker alright. Gams for days. And those are some first-rate bazookas,” Kresge responded, perking up and outlining a generous handful of imaginary cleavage. “Whatdya say, Mulder? Maybe you should take a few shots from the shoulders down, to warm up your bachelor pad.”

Mulder continued to look studiously away from the naked body lying on the grass nearby, uncovered as the medical examiner tried to estimate time of death by measuring her internal body temperature. Cause of death wasn’t going to tough to determine, given to the bloody slash reaching from earlobe to earlobe. Considering her state of undress and lurid positioning, there had likely been other abuses as well.

“I say she’s suffered enough at the hands of men who want to possess her body, Kresge. Let her have her dignity at least.” Mulder turned away, disgusted.

“She’s already dead, Mulder. She don’t need no hero,” the officer replied defensively.

And that summed up his life quite succinctly.

***

Sunbeams slanted down from the clerestory windows that were the only source of natural light inside the Swampoodle. Monica and Samantha stood side by side behind the bar, polishing the glassware in advance of the arrival of patrons later that night. Samantha held her pint glass up to the window, smiling in pleasure at the absence of water spots.

“I dunna know that they notice the state o’ the glasses,” Monica remarked in her thick brogue.

“Mr. Murphy says the Senator and his friends may come in tonight,” Samantha replied. “I want everything to be sparkling clean for them.”

The older woman observed Samantha shrewdly, opened her mouth to say something, rethought, and then simply said, “Aye, they like their wares unspoiled, ‘tis true.”

***

_Three poplar trees cast long shadows across the freshly mown grass, reaching the heads of the police officers in their dark uniforms, who formed an incongruent mirror image. Their shoulders were relaxed, hands hanging loosely beside holstered weapons, or dangling lit cigarettes. Over their heads drifted a smoky halo, already dissipating in the crisp dawn air. There was a quality of jovial comradeship to the image, belying the naked, tortured body just outside the frame._

***

He was reading The Invisible Man late at night, the radio muttering quietly in the background for company, when there was a sharp knock at the door. At first glance he thought it was a homeless waif, begging for shelter from the heavy spring rain, but then the light from the stairwell caught a pair of enormous blue eyes framed by amber wisps of hair and he recognized her.

“Mr. Mulder, I don’t know if you remember me,” she began.

“Of course. Miss Scully. Come in before you drown.”

Instead of taking a chair this time, she sat on his couch, touching the open spine of his book with shaking fingers. As before, she scanned the room anxiously, and he realized she was looking for signs of degeneracy. Besides the fact that he hadn’t washed his dishes from supper, there were none visible. It was just a simple basement apartment: cheap, untidy and smelling of warm dust and coffee grinds.

She took a deep breath and released it as words. “I’ve changed my mind. About the pictures. I… I want you to take them. Of me.”

“That’s…” He didn’t get a chance to finish whatever thought he meant to articulate, because just then she stood, unbelted her knee-length coat, and suddenly there was a scantily-clad woman in his apartment. 

She wasn’t completely naked, and somehow that made it worse. More erotic. She wore a black lace demi-bra, black lace panties, high heels and garters holding up her dark stockings that she’d clearly borrowed from someone a little taller, for the tops were folded over once. The line where the lingerie met her milky skin drew his gaze, like shadows on snow. She was lovely. He swallowed thickly.

“Uhhh…” He was usually slightly more articulate around half-naked women, but then again, he usually had a bit more warning.

“Would this do? I don’t think I could, you know, with nothing at all.” Her voice was shaking, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. This was obviously taking every last ounce of her courage.

He carefully leaned past her, lifted the Navaho blanket he kept draped over his couch, and wrapped it around her shoulders so that she was mostly covered.

“Miss Scully, I’m honoured that you’d consider doing… that. But I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Society isn’t kind to those who break its rules. Your family…”

A fat tear rolled down her pale cheek.

“It’s on account of my family that I’m doing this,” she murmured.

“I don’t understand.”

And so, with a shaky voice, she related the entire story. How her parents were both dead and she and her younger sister were trying to stay out of the poorhouse. How she was almost finished her nursing degree, working night shifts at the hospital to keep her dwindling family fed. And how her younger sister, against Dana’s better judgement, found a paying job working at a tavern where she had caught the attention of a powerful benefactor. Then disappeared without a trace.

“Wait, your sister is missing?” he interrupted.

“For the past week. And the police don’t have any leads, and her employer is withholding her pay, saying that she failed to show up for work and caused him a great deal of inconvenience. And now our April rent is due, and the landlord is threatening to evict us if we’re late again, and…” her voice faltered, and he put his arm around her shoulders, being careful not to dislodge the blanket.

“So you thought you’d let me sell some risqué pictures of you, to make ends meet,” he concluded, and she nodded miserably.

“How much is your rent?”

“Twenty dollars.”

“That’s a lot of photographs. You’re very beautiful, but even so, I don’t know how many pictures I could sell quickly, especially when you’re …” he broke off awkwardly.

“Still somewhat clothed,” she finished, despondent.

“Yes. Look, there’s got to be another way.”

“Don’t you think I’ve been racking my brains for days, trying to think of one! It’s not as though becoming a pin-up girl is my fondest wish.” She took a deep breath, trying to master her temper. “No offence, Mr. Mulder. I don’t believe what you do is morally wrong, and it’s certainly a lot more above board than the extremes many women are forced to go to in order to support themselves these days, with all the men back from the war and needing employment. But as you say, society isn’t known to be kind.”

“No offence taken. You seem incredibly resourceful and brave. I’m simply suggesting that there may be options you haven’t considered.”

“Such as?”

“Well, your sister’s employer, for one. How much does he owe her?”

“Thirty dollars, but Mr. Murphy is adamant...”

“And where was she working?” he interrupted.

“The Swampoodle Tavern, as a barmaid.”

He nodded, the beginnings of an idea forming. When it came to Washington’s criminal element, he was depressingly well-connected. 

With a bit of wheedling, he convinced Dana to meet him in Georgetown the next day, after her classes finished.

“Why are you doing this?,” she asked. “You’re under no obligation to help me, Mr. Mulder. I’ve come here twice, and each time you’ve been understanding and compassionate. That’s more than anyone could expect.”

He shook his head, not knowing how to answer. Instead he asked, “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Samantha.”

He froze, a familiar feeling of horror buzzing in his chest.

“Sa-mantha?” His normally mellow voice rose in disbelief.

“Yes, that’s right. Samantha Ann Scully. You don’t know her, do you?” That seemed impossible, given the differences in their ages and the sheltered life Samantha had led until their mother’s death.

“No. I don’t know her. I just… it’s a nice name. I’ve thought so for a long time.”

She looked perplexed but didn’t dare inquire further. He was an odd mix of decency and non-conformity, this lanky, solitary man with hungry eyes. Perhaps, she thought as she walked home in the rain, he benefited simply by being needful to someone.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: this chapter contains depictions of the Holocaust and its aftermath

Wurzburg, Schweinfurt, Furth. One after another, villages and towns along the path of the U.S. Seventh Army fell like winter apples in the rising warmth of the spring of 1945. The 42nd Infantry Division was hastening towards Munich when they were diverted south at the last moment, to liberate a work camp. As they approached the high wire fence surrounding the camp, Mulder’s nerves started to coil tight around his spine. Something was wrong. The prisoners who pressed against the fence, ten or twenty deep, weren’t fit for any kind of labour. Most could hardly stand. And there was a peculiar stench in the air that reminded him of the time he tried to dry his leather boots in the oven.

The camp, called Dachau after the local village, was thinly guarded and those guards fell quickly to American rifle fire. The gates swung open, and Mulder marched with the vanguard into hell.

Murmurs and wraithlike hands reached out to grab his drab green fatigues, and he willed himself not to flinch away. His Contax camera raised, he started to photograph the horror; emaciated bodies and bulging dark eyes that had looked beyond the event horizon of suffering. They barely looked human. Unable to withstand their abject gratitude, he pushed towards the nearest outbuilding. It was a storeroom for every object of value that had been stripped from the prisoners: gold wedding bands, silver women’s jewelry, teeth capped with gold and brass belt buckles. An entire closet was full of men’s watches, many still keeping time. Hundreds, thousands, each ticking to a slightly different beat. A muted cacophony that hinted at the degree of evil that hung over the entire place. Far too many watches for the number of men standing in the yard. He snapped a picture and rushed out.

Next were the women’s barracks, where those who were too weak to meet their liberators lay in absolute filth, wall-eyed and bloated below their sunken ribs. He raised his camera and fired a few shots, but his arms dropped to his sides, unable to memorialize their degradation. A baby’s thin cry rose from one of the bunks, and he bolted outside, trying to breathe through his panic. He had seen war. He had documented death. He had never witnessed anything like this.

Beyond the larger structures stood a copse of poplar and fir trees, strangely idyllic in the otherwise barren terrain. Nestled in their midst was a simple white building and he knew before he opened the door that this was the vortex of the horror that lay over the camp like fog. The floors were swept clean, the walls whitewashed. Three brick ovens filled the space. He looked around, expecting some outward sign of what he was feeling inside, but it was an innocuous, tidy room. He touched the brick walls of an oven. They were still warm.

Outside, he knelt beside a tree and vomited until his stomach ached, his camera still clutched in one hand. That was the last thing he remembered for the next two months.

***

_The man’s head was crudely shaved, and white hair tufted his scalp like a fledging chick. His dark eyes were deep pools in the sunken landscape of his face, and in the reflection of one iris, a watchtower could be seen. His lips were parted in a pitiful, half-executed smile. There was something indelible in his gaze: like a lone tree left standing after a gale. The unimaginable had come to pass, yet he had survived, and horror perished._


	10. Chapter 10

The police captain looked up from his paper-strewn desk at the receptionist’s knock.

“Miss Dana Scully here to see you, Captain,” she explained, and then stood back and let the petite redhead enter. As during their previous meeting, he was struck by the poise and air of silent determination that the young woman exuded. 

Today Miss Scully was dressed in a white uniform covered by a simple beige trench coat, and he remembered her saying that she was in nursing college. She hardly looked old enough to have completed high school, but he let a vagrant thought pass about wishing the nurses he’d encountered while serving in the Pacific had been as beautiful. Then he mentally shook himself – she was easily half his age, and here only because her sister was missing.

“Good morning, Miss Scully. Please have a seat.” He stood as she lowered herself into the chair facing his desk, and he noticed a pleased twitch of her full-lipped mouth. Apparently, Dana Scully appreciated a little old-fashioned gallantry, despite being a modern, self-asserting woman. He liked her even more because of it.

“Good morning, Captain Skinner. Thank you for seeing me without an appointment. I’m afraid my class and work schedule has played havoc with my date book,” she explained.

“That’s quite all right, Miss Scully. I only wish I had more news to share with you. I’ve circulated the photograph of your sister to each of the officers at the precinct, and two of my best men interviewed Mr. Murphy and other members of his staff at his tavern. Unfortunately, we have no credible leads at the moment.”

“What about this senator and his cronies that she mentioned on several occasions? If one of them took a fancy to her…”

“Mr. Murphy is adamant there were no such patrons at his tavern. And I must be frank, Miss Scully, I’m prone to believe him. The Swampoodle is hardly the kind of establishment frequented by our elected officials,” he deflected.

“Oh no. I’m certain they are all home at night with their lovely wives and children, smoking a pipe and watching I Love Lucy.” Her sarcasm had bite, and he flushed, letting his temper flare at this challenge to his authority from an unexpected quarter.

“My job is to oversee this precinct as I judge best, Miss Scully. I’m not going to run into the Senate Building and start making unfounded accusations about an unnamed senator frequenting a third-rate saloon and being implicated in the disappearance of a young woman who may, you must admit, simply have run away with a likely suitor, as many pretty but poverty-stricken women have done before her.”

She rose to her full diminutive height and her blue eyes could have frozen nitrogen. Every word now came out of her mouth with knife-edge precision.

“Samantha would never run away from her family, Captain Skinner. I’m all she has left in the world. I find it ironic that I have reported my sister’s disappearance and provided you with a possible avenue of investigation, and yet it is her motives you are questioning, not those of whoever saw her last.” He opened his mouth to placate her, having never meant to spark her ire to such a degree.

“I can see that you’re a very busy and important man, Captain Skinner. I won’t importune you any further with the minor cares of a mere poverty-stricken woman. Good day.”

She spun and exited his office with a hiss of stockings and starched skirt. He knew he’d never hear from her again; she was too proud. He removed his reading glasses and dragged his meaty hand down his face, feeling a headache start to bloom.

“Karen,” he boomed to his assistant, “bring me some Goody's Powder. And the number for Detective Kersh in Organized Crime,” he added, his conscience getting the better of him.


	11. Chapter 11

They met at a designated bus stop, and she realized this was the first time she’d seen him outdoors, freed from the dim enclosure of his basement apartment. He seemed taller, somehow. And when the lights from passing cars glanced off his features, oddly handsome. She’d already noticed his fine sable hair, with a slight boyish curl that was longer than the regulation length most men wore. And his eyes were… she struggled for the right adjective: haunted, but also so focussed they burned; mirthful, but brimming with lifetimes of sadness; green but hinting at blue, grey but darkening to brown. Lovat. Somehow, having a word to describe their colour settled her and gave her a window of clarity from where she could start to expand her understanding of the man.

“Thank you for meeting me on such a dismal night, Mr. Mulder,” she greeted.

“You’re welcome. And please, under the circumstances, I think you should call me Mulder.”

“The circumstances?”

“Yes. These people that I’m taking you to meet, they’re… well, paranoid would be a polite term. If they think we’re only acquaintances, they may not trust you enough to tell us what they might know,” he explained.

“I see. Your friends call you Mulder, not Fox?”

“Anyone who calls me Fox is no friend of mine,” he quipped.

“Well, in that case Mulder, I think you should call me Dana, to not arouse suspicions of our mere acquaintance.” He grinned and nodded.

Mulder led her down M Street away from Rock Creek Parkway before veering south just before the Key Bridge and then finally into a dark alley. She was grateful that he’d insisted on meeting her bus. He knocked loudly on the industrial door to a single-story warehouse with faded paint on the brick wall that read “Aubrey & Sons”. After a long pause, there was a clanging of metal on metal, and the oversized door opened.

“You guys really need to get a telephone. Alexander Graham Bell has been dead for thirty years. It’s time to join the twentieth century,” Mulder began in lieu of a greeting.

“No way, man. Telephones are the tools of the bourgeois capitalist. We won’t be catalogued!”

The speaker was a short man, only a few inches taller than Dana’s petite frame, with stringy hair combed back from a receding hairline and wireframe glasses that had gone out of style in the thirties. As soon as he noticed her, he stood up a little taller and smiled broadly.

“Mulder, you dog. You never mentioned you’d be bringing over one of your little friends. Hello, lovely lady.”

Dana stepped a bit closer to Mulder, and he rested a hand on the small of her back in reassurance.

“Back off, Frohike. This is Dana Scully, and she is far too classy for the likes of you or me. But her sister has gone missing, and I was hoping the three of you could tap into your networks to see what you hear.”

“Three of them?” Dana finally spoke.

“Oh yeah. There’s more where this one came from. They just make him answer the door to scare off strangers. This place is going to make a night in the emergency room at Georgetown Hospital seem like an episode of Ozzie & Harriet.”

“If this one is Larry, where are Curley and Moe?” she asked with a smirk. Mulder hooted and Frohike sputtered.

“That’s brilliant, Dana! I can’t believe I’ve known these guys for years and it never occurred to me that they’re The Three Stooges! I wonder if that makes me Shemp?” 

“You’re a funny guy, Mulder. Remind me again why I put up with you?” Frohike groused as they walked towards the back of the warehouse.

“For Duty and Humanity?” At which point even Dana laughed.

As the evening progressed, she felt as though she’d slipped through some transparent barrier dividing the outwardly civil world in which she’d grown up and some murkier, grubby underworld that, for all its sordid characteristics, felt truer than its outward echo. Here were men she might have crossed the street to avoid encountering, and yet they wanted to help, simply because they hated injustice in all its forms, and she’d been befriended by one of their own. Meanwhile, in so-called polite society her sister’s disappearance had been met with benign indifference by the very people who were charged with the protection of the innocent. 

They left two hours later with a promise that the Stooges would pursue some avenues of inquiry best left to the experts. The wind had picked up and blew off the Potomac in icy gusts, cutting through her too-thin winter coat. Mulder saw her shiver, unwrapped his woolen scarf and offered it to her silently. It smelled like him, woodsy and oddly familiar.

At her bus stop he loomed beside her, his hands pushed deep into his overcoat pockets.

“You don’t have to wait with me, Mulder. Who knows when the next bus will arrive?”

“That’s exactly why I’m waiting. It’s late.” The set of his shoulders told her he wasn’t going to give way on this point, and she was secretly grateful, although she’d never admit it out loud.

Another ten minutes passed with no sign of her bus. A number of taxis slowed, their drivers rubber-necking, but neither of them had money to spare for the fare.

“Well, this is an exercise in futility,” she finally commented. “I’m going to walk. Thank you for waiting with me, Mulder. I suppose we’ll be in touch once your friends have any news.”

“Which way are you going?”

“Straight down M Street, more or less. We’re in the Second Northwest Co-op.”

He knew the building, and it was a rough part of town. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she said her family had fallen on hard times, and his opinion of her mettle and determination to support herself and her sister grew.

“Look, that’s not far out of my way. Would you mind a little company?”

Her independent streak wanted to resist, but both common sense and courtesy suggested she should accept. She nodded thankfully, and they turned eastward and began to walk.

After a few blocks Mulder asked, “So this tavern, the..”

“Swampoodle?”

“Yeah. Where exactly is it?”

“Just across the street from Union Station. Why?”

“Oh, I just thought we could pay Mr. Murphy a visit tonight. See if we can’t convince him to release your sister’s pay.”

“I don’t know, Mulder. He seemed pretty adamant that he’d be keeping that money,” she said hesitantly.

“Before you had a champion, maybe.”

“Is that what you are? My champion?”

“I guess I’d like to be.” He kept his gaze downward, his strides shortened so that she could keep up with him without trotting.

“Mulder, why?”

He stopped and looked up at the night sky, occluded with heavy-hanging cloud. The long breath he released made a parenthesis of condensation appear over his head.

“It's just that… it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a position to intervene before the worst possible outcome has already occurred. I’ve made a career documenting other people’s tragedies. So often in my life, I haven't been able to save… to make any difference. I feel like, for you, for your sister, I could change that.”

Her gloved hand reached blindly towards him, then dropped away. The night was damp, but this man was positively drowning in melancholy. She wished she could ease his sorrow, whatever its cause. 

“I can’t speak for anyone else, but you’ve already made a tremendous difference to me. You listened, and you cared enough to help. You can’t imagine what a relief that has been.”

He looked down at her wind-pinked face and smiled in gratitude.

“Let’s go pay Mr. Murphy that visit,” she concluded decisively.

***

If the Swampoodle had a more refined clientele, they had left for home before Mulder and Dana arrived. Those who remained were to varying degrees drunk, disorderly and dangerous. Other than the serving staff, Dana was the only woman and was already attracting several salacious glances. Mulder towered over her, staring down anyone who looked their way for too long. She felt his gloved hand rest on her back.

“You again? If you keep stopping by, Miss Scully, I’m going to wrap you in an apron and assign you some tables.” In the way of many Irish bar-keepers, Mr. Murphy had clearly been sampling his wares, and his cheeks were ruddy with broken capillaries beneath his pale complexion. 

“No thank you,” Dana sniffed. “You have an unfortunate habit of misplacing your staff.”

“Now, I told you…”

“You told Miss Scully that you owed her sister thirty dollars in back-wages,” Mulder interrupted, quickly losing patience with the man’s oily ways.

“And who might you be?”

“Fox Mulder. I represent Miss Scully and her sister.” She glanced quickly at Mulder’s face, but he kept his gaze fixed downward on the significantly shorter man.

“You’re a lawyer?” Mr. Murphy asked, and Dana noticed other patrons sliding back into the shadows of their booths.

“I work with law enforcement,” Mulder bluffed, not exactly lying. “It would be a shame if I had to ask some of my peers to stop by and enjoy your hospitality. Maybe they could even pay a visit to your famous back room.”

Mr. Murphy paled visibly and then, muttering angrily under his breath, reached behind the bar into his cash box and extracted several bills, handing them to Mulder without a word.

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Murphy.” Mulder used his arm to spin her towards the door and they made their way down the street, grinning like co-conspirators. What they both failed to notice was the silent exchange between the bartender and some of his guests, as soon as their backs were turned.

They parted company at the front door of Dana’s complex, but not before Mulder had handed over the cash and secured her telephone number, carefully committing it to memory as he walked towards home with a light step, despite the chill night air.


	12. Chapter 12

The psychiatric ward was not a quiet place. Voices, both raised and muttering, could be heard at all hours of the day and night. As Dana Scully walked down the beige corridor, a man was screaming.

“They're coming again. They're coming again, I can feel it. They're going to take Duane Barry to this place!!”

She stopped in the doorway of the private room, observing the scene within. An average-sized man with dark hair and haunted eyes stood in his hospital gown, flailing from side to side as though fending off blows. The ward nurse, a woman Dana knew in passing, stood near the door, blocking the patient’s exit. Sitting in one of the hospital’s stiff-backed visitor’s chairs was an older man with a wild mop of curly grey hair and a heavy German accent. It was he who was speaking to the patient, and she assumed he was a doctor of some sort, though she did not recognize him.

“Now, Mr. Barry, you need to calm down for this to work. Can you please take a seat?” The doctor spoke calmly, with an oddly melodic voice. Even Dana found herself relaxing. The patient sank into the chair opposite the doctor.

“Very good. Now, I want you to concentrate on your breathing. Deep breath in through your nose. And release the air through your mouth. In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”

She looked over at Nurse Kazdin, wondering at what kind of treatment she was witnessing.

“Hypno-therapy,” the woman whispered under her breath. Dana shook her head, not knowing the word.

“It’s a form of induced trance that Dr. Werber uses to treat patients suffering from post-trauma neuroses. Mr. Barry’s plane was shot down over Japan during the war. He was a POW for eighteen months, and a repeat guest of my ward ever since. But Dr. Werber’s treatment is highly effective in helping him deal with his trauma. Just watch.”

Her initial skepticism transformed into grudging respect and eventually awe as the doctor lulled Duane Barry into a somnambulant repose in which he heard and responded to the doctor’s cues but was otherwise utterly passive. In this state, he recounted his torture by a man he referred to as Dr. Ishimaru in the POW camp, including the removal of his back molars without anesthetic and the implantation of some form of metal object into his nasal cavity.

Dana was familiar to an extent with the war crimes committed during World War II, but she’d never paused to consider how those experiences would live on in the memories of those who witnessed them and survived. Whatever the science behind it, Dr. Werber’s unusual approach seemed to soothe his patient’s agitation. When she left, having completely forgotten the initial purpose of her visit to the psych ward, Duane Barry was sleeping peacefully in his bed.


	13. Chapter 13

He slowly cycled back to awareness in a sun-washed room, lying on his back in a simple white bed. He tried to raise a hand to scrub at his face, but something bound his wrists to the bedframe. Fear seemed like too much effort, so he merely closed his eyes and let reality spool away from him, like a kite on a string.

…

A straw was inserted between his lips, and he sucked gratefully on cool, crisp water. Voices murmured, and he opened his eyes to a middle-aged brunette in a white nurses’ uniform, a red cross over her left bosom.

“War?” he managed to croak.

“It’s over, Corporal Mulder. Hitler’s dead, the enemy surrendered, and our boys are heading home.”

“Me too?” he begged.

“Yes, Corporal Mulder. You too. Just as soon as we get you settled.”

He wanted to ask about his injuries and when he’d been promoted to corporal. Besides a tremendous weight that pressed him down towards the floor, he wasn’t in any pain. He couldn’t remember getting shot or being near an exploding mortar. But something must be wrong because the war was over, yet he was still abed in a military hospital. He was trying to solve this puzzle through the cobwebs in his brain when the nurse inserted a needle into the IV he had yet to notice beside his bed, and at once he felt the whirlpool suck of oblivion drag him underground.

…

“How are you today, Corporal Mulder?” His doctor was short, built like a spark plug, and his greying hair was longer than regulation. Then again, based on the constant tickle of bangs against his forehead, so was his. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror for… an indeterminate amount of time.

“I’d like to be able to scratch my ass, if you must know, Doc,” he replied sardonically.

“I understand. I just want to ask you a few questions first.”

“I think I can squeeze you into my busy schedule. My spoon-fed applesauce doesn’t arrive until noon.”

“Very good. Now, tell me your full name.”

“Fox William Mulder. The last I remember, there was a rank of Private First Class that went with that name, but I hear I’ve been promoted. And that the war is over, so the fact that I’ve been promoted while lying in bed is a bit perplexing, but I’ll take the pay raise.”

“So you recognize that you’ve been… mentally incapacitated, then?”

“It’s the only explanation that fits the facts as I know them.”

“Very good. It’s an excellent sign that you can both identify with yourself and your surroundings.”

“Has that been an issue before now?” he asked, cautious.

“In a manner of speaking. You came to this hospital with some of the last wartime casualties to be evacuated out of Germany before the Nazis surrendered. That was early May. Yours was one of the most profound states of catatonia I’ve ever witnessed. And when you came briefly out of it, you were uncontrollably violent. We had to keep you sedated, but even then, you had terrible lucid nightmares, and you would scream out ‘Don’t hurt her! Don’t you dare take Samantha!’ Does that name mean something to you, Corporal Mulder?”

He shook his head, astonished at what he was hearing. “No. No, I don’t know anyone by that name. How… how long have I been here? And where is here?”

“You’ve been with us for about ten weeks. You’re at the Second General Hospital just outside of Oxford, England.”

“Jesus.”

“I think that’s enough information for one day, Corporal Mulder. I wouldn’t want you to suffer a setback. I only have one other question for you, and your answer will determine how quickly we can get you back stateside to your friends and family.”

“Yes?”

“Are you still considering doing a harm to yourself?”

\---

As best as he could decipher, he took a hiatus from reality the day his unit liberated Dachau. He had only faded postcard memories of the camp, and nothing afterward. He’d been evacuated to a field hospital with the physically wounded, and when he didn’t respond to the typical treatment for shell shock, which was rest and quiet, he was further evacuated to the convalescent hospital in Nancy, and from thence to Oxford.

He asked the nurses for his camera but was told that it didn’t make the journey with him back from the front. The pictures he took were likewise not available. When he mentioned them, his doctor shook his head sadly, insisting that reliving the scenes that had triggered his mental breakdown was unwise.

“Have you seen them, Doc?”

“The whole world has seen them, Corporal. Six years of warfare, millions dead, entire countries brought to their knees. One look at those pictures, and I knew it was justified. You showed us what we’d been fighting for, without our even knowing it.”

***

_The newstype was almost as high as a man’s hand was wide: The Horror of Dachau. The entire front page of every major American paper ran a similar article, with his photo placed strategically below the fold, to avoid traumatizing women and children. Compared to many pictures he took that day, it was largely innocuous. Men were standing in a large, bare yard, each staring towards his camera and the liberating soldiers it heralded. They clustered in groups of two or three or seven, some being propped upright by a neighbour. At first glance they looked like overgrown children, playing dress-up in their fathers’ clothes, so loose were their garments. Looking closer, each wore the same look of haunted disbelief. How could Abaddon simply vanish before their eyes, like smoke before the wind? And when would it return?_


	14. Chapter 14

She was about to knock on Mulder’s door when she noticed the bloody handprint on the jamb. Familiar with its stubbornness by now, she used her shoulder to give the door a hard shove, and it yielded. The lights were off inside, the stairs lit only by the glow of his fish tank.

“Mulder?” she tried as she descended, unsure whether she was welcome.

A low groan came from beyond the main room. She fumbled beneath the lampshade for some light, then made her way into the unfamiliar hallway beyond the main room. Opening the door to the left, she found a small room filled with boxes and various bits of spare photography equipment stacked around and on a bare mattress lying on the floor. It was obviously meant to be a bedroom, but she knew from experience Mulder slept on the couch. Still, he wasn’t there.

The door across the hall led into a storage room Mulder had re-purposed as his dark room. Two low tables lined the far walls and across the space were strung multiple cords, from each of which were suspended eight by ten black and white photos. Her eye was drawn to the closest of these, and she saw a half dozen shots of a woman’s hand cupping a naked breast. They were at once shocking and beautiful, and she felt compelled to look more closely, to scrutinize the mystery that hid behind the raw anatomy on display.

Before she could explore further, a shadow near the back corner shifted, and she realized Mulder was curled up on the cold tile floor, still in the boots, hat and coat he had worn to the Swampoodle.

“Mulder!” She was at his side, trying to ascertain his injuries. The only light trickled in from the main room, but she could make out a bloody lump just above his left eyebrow. As she tried to manoeuvre his semi-inert body so that he was laying flat on his back, his left arm hung awkwardly at his side. He was mumbling to himself – something about a doctor, his camera, the war. Alright, Nurse Scully. Assess the patient. Trauma to the skull, dislocated shoulder, semi-conscious. She needed to measure his pupils’ reaction to light.

“Mulder, can you hear me? It’s Dana. I need to know if you understand me.”

He moaned and tried to turn away.

“No. Mulder, you have to listen to me. I need to shine a light in your eyes, to check for head trauma. Where do you keep a flashlight?”

“Nuhhhh. No light,” he groaned.

“You don’t have a flashlight?”

“No light. In here. Pictures.” He was starting to come around, cracking open one eye and peering at her. “Dana?”

“That’s right. It’s Dana. You’ve been hurt. Can you move? I’d like to get you off this cold floor, but I need to know what hurts first.”

“Everything,” he laughed, then coughed, then winced.

She reached behind his neck with one arm and gently lifted him to a seated position.

“Well, it’s a good thing you befriended a nurse, then.”

With a great deal of grunting and groaning on both their parts, she managed to get him mostly upright and they shuffled slowly to his couch, where he sunk with a grateful sigh. She halted his sideways descent towards horizontal and insisted he remove his outerwear, so she could get a better look at his injuries. This resulted in a lot more cursing - mostly his this time - but he was finally stretched out on his good side. She began by running her fingers through his surprisingly soft hair, checking for bumps or cuts. His pupils were evenly-sized and reacted to light. Having ruled out a serious head injury, she turned her attention to his torso.

“Your shoulder is dislocated, Mulder. I’m going to have to pop it back into place, and it’s not going to be an enjoyable experience for either of us.”

“What if I don’t wanna wrestle with a girl?” he teased, but she was not waylaid. She’d dealt with reluctant patients twice her size before.

“Before we move on to combat sports, I’d like to clean that wound above your eye. Where do you keep your Aspirin, Mulder?”

“Anything I have is in the medicine cabinet in the washroom.”

“Wait right here,” she directed.

“You’re very bossy for an amateur,” he complained, and could hear her chuckle as she made her way to his tiny bathroom.

The cut above his eye, once cleaned, wasn’t so deep that it needed stitches, so she patched it with a butterfly bandage she’d found in his Dopp kit. Shaking three Aspirin onto her palm, she lifted him carefully and helped him swallow them with a sip of water. While she waited for the pain relievers to kick in, she distracted him with conversation.

“Should I ask who you angered to the point that they used you as a punching bag? I hope it wasn’t one of your models’ boyfriends.”

“Not unless she was dating three strapping Irish lads,” he sighed, sinking back onto his couch and closing his eyes.

“Irish?” she drew back from her careful examination of his ribs.

“Mmhmm. I guess Mr. Murphy wasn’t very happy about having to pay you that thirty dollars.”

“But… that makes no sense. How do you know this had anything to do with our visit with Mr. Murphy?”

“It just seems a little too coincidental to be otherwise, Dana. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been at odds with the Irish Mob before, and yet right after I force an Irish tavern owner to pay your sister’s back-wages, I get my ass, errr, hind end kicked by three Irish thugs while walking home. What would you infer?”

She shook her head mutely, feeling a weight of culpability settle over her.

“I’m very sorry, Mulder. If I’d had any idea…”

“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong, and visiting Mr. Murphy was my idea, if you’ll recall. We’ll just have to be extra vigilant when searching for your sister. I think there’s something more going on here than a missing barmaid. Everyone is being far too cagey.”

“We’ll talk about it when you’re better,” she stalled, having no intention of involving Mulder in a potential deadly pursuit, no matter how good his intentions or valuable his sources.

“Yeah.”

It was clear that his strength was failing him as the pain killers took effect. With an apologetic glance, she climbed over his torso, placing her left knee over his right shoulder. When she jerked his arm back into its socket, his besotted look disappeared, along with most of the blood in his face.

“Rest, Mulder. I’ll be right here.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Don’t you have to work?” he asked upon waking and finding Dana in his kitchen making toast and broth.

“I’m off for Easter. No nauseating adventures in the Georgetown emergency room for me until next Tuesday.” During his periods of wakefulness, she’d kept them both entertained by relating tales of her education and family. By contrast, Mulder shared very little about himself or his history. But he was an eager audience, asking questions and chuckling at her anecdotes.

“What about your exams?” he asked as she helped him limp back from the bathroom. There was blood in his urine, and she worried about kidney damage from the kicks he’d taken to his back.

“I’m well ahead with my reading. Most of what I have left to learn comes from hands-on practice, and I’m getting plenty of that here with you.” 

Neither of them mentioned her sister. After two weeks, Dana’s daily calls to the police precinct to inquire on the status of their investigation had started to feel like a mere formality.

“Mulder,” she continued after a pause in which he settled himself gently on one cushion, leaving room for her beside him, “I really need to take a better look at your back and ribs. You could have broken a bone.”

“Whatever you say, Nurse Scully. What do I need to do?”

“Umm, take off your shirt. It could probably use a wash. I’ll get you a clean one after we’re done.”

It seemed not to occur to her that she was asking a man to strip naked while they were alone in his apartment. He wasn’t certain whether to be honoured or humiliated by her trust. But she had a point – he could smell himself. Moving his aching left shoulder as little as possible, he carefully worked his pullover up and over his head. 

Her fingers were cool and businesslike as they palpated his ribs and spine. He flinched when she reached his lower back, which he knew from a glance in the bathroom mirror was black and blue.

“Oh Mulder,” she sighed from between his shoulder blades. Her hands had slid forward to his flanks unawares, and her breath tickled the fine hair on his scapula. He tried valiantly to suppress it, but a shudder burst forth from his spine and shimmered to his extremities. The pause that followed would have registered on a seismometer, then she pushed herself deliberately away and switched on her professional decorum.

“Nothing’s broken, but your kidneys are likely bruised. If you still see blood in your urine tomorrow, please tell me,” she enunciated in a business-like tone.

“You’ll be the first to know, Nurse Scully.”

***

They were begging him with their adipose eyes. Hands curled around his shoulders, trying to pull him into oblivion. He resisted, and their fingers grew longer with annular tips pressing against his clammy skin. Their eyes… their eyes were enormous, so black they released no light from their bulging ovoid surface. He sucked air into his lungs to scream. They were tearing at his shoulder, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t save her, Samantha!

He woke to the noise of his shout. A door banged open and Dana appeared from his bedroom, where she’d been resting on his hastily cleared mattress.

“Mulder? What is it? Are you okay?”

The neural cascade was already underway. His heart chattered in his chest and he couldn’t draw a deep breath. Numbness crept up his limbs as ice washed down his spine. He needed to pace, to get outside, to see the sky, but he could barely move because of his injuries.

“Slow breaths, Mulder. You’re okay. I’m going to touch you, alright?”

A cool palm lay across his forehead. The touch drew him back from the edge.

“That’s good. You’re fine. Can you count with me, Mulder? Count with me: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Good. And back down: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…”

He timed his breaths to the steady cadence of her voice, and the panic slowly receded. The room came into focus, lit by the murky light of his fish tank. He was sitting upright on his couch, the blanket and pillow strewn on the floor. He wore only his cotton underwear and a thin layer of sweat, and he knew the crisis was over when it occurred to him to feel bashful about his state of undress.

“So, you suffer from panic attacks I gather,” she said after a few quiet minutes had passed.

“I suppose denying it would be futile at this point,” he replied, trying to casually grab the blanket from the floor without toppling over or bracing on his bad shoulder.

“Since the war?” she guessed.

“Uhh, yeah.”

Sensing he wasn’t eager to talk about his combat experience, as many men weren’t, she tried another tack. “Who’s Samantha?”

He ceased fidgeting for the blanket and dropped his hands in his lap instead. The deep breath he drew caused him to flinch.

“I don’t know. As far as I can recall, I’ve never known anyone by that name, and I’d remember. But since… the war… I, uh… I apparently have nightmares about someone named Samantha. Something about her being taken, being hurt…” he broke off when he saw her stricken face.

“I’m sure it’s not your sister, Dana. It must be a coincidence,” he assured her.

“You were just arguing against the coincidental, Mulder. It’s not a common name.”

“But it’s a name I started dreaming about in 1945, long before I met you or heard about your sister. Listen, it’s late. Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.” He reached up with his good arm and illuminated the reading lamp overhanging the couch. She blinked at the sudden light. He noticed that she’d taken off her bra to sleep, likely finding it uncomfortable. He could make out her nipples through the thin cotton of her top. He deliberately focused on opening his book.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just going to read for a while, until I can get back to sleep. Goodnight, Dana.” He was dismissing her rather abruptly, but he didn’t want to think about the war, about his prescient dreams, or about the fact that he was alone at night with an attractive woman while they were each under-dressed. Rudeness was the least of available evils.

“Goodnight, Mulder,” she answered softly, making her way back down the hall. “Call me if you need anything.”

***

Back in his neglected bedroom, Dana couldn’t get settled. Her mind skittered from one topic to another: her missing sister, Mulder calling out the name Samantha while dreaming, the likelihood that Mr. Murphy had sent some of his regulars to rough up Mulder over a mere thirty dollars, the golden tone of Mulder’s supple skin as it stretched over his clavicles. None of these thoughts were conducive to sleep, and she tossed on the narrow mattress in frustration.

When she’d unearthed some dubiously clean sheets from the back of his closet earlier, she’d noticed an open box filled with books. Perhaps she could read herself to sleep as well. Upon opening the lid wider, she realized that the box contained photo albums, not novels. Glancing furtively towards the closed door, as though Mulder would barge in and demand that she cease snooping, she lifted the first album into her lap. Its leather spine creaked with age as she gently opened it.

Inside were the small square sepia-toned photos common before the war. An infant in an elaborate Christening gown posed before a baptismal font, and then in the arms of a regal-looking woman in elegant clothing. Mulder and his mother, she supposed. With each successive page, the features of the man she knew emerged from his cherubic baby face. From the furnishings and background in each picture, she got the impression of a sophisticated upper-class life. She wondered what had happened. The loving chronicle of youth ceased when the subject was in his mid-teens, angular and gawky in the way of most pubescent boys, but already showing the promise of the handsome man he would become. 

Next came a series of loose photos: Mulder standing beside a beautiful DeSoto coupe, proudly holding a set of keys; the Washington Capitol building; a raven-haired woman posing beneath a blossoming cherry tree; Mulder in an army private’s uniform, smiling bashfully at the photographer. Another picture of the same woman staring alluringly at the lens was wrinkled and stained, as though it had travelled many miles.

When she opened the next album, a horrible clarity descended on her. A stack of large format pictures slid onto her lap. She recognized them from the newspapers that had been sold on every street corner at the end of the war. They showed a liberated Nazi concentration camp and its occupants, in the frozen aftermath of all its barbaric horror. She knew without question that Mulder had been the photographer. His nightmares now made perfect sense. She no longer wanted to dream herself.


	16. Chapter 16

It was Monday, and she would be leaving the next morning to return to her schoolwork and her increasingly vain search for her sister. While still aching and bruised, Mulder was once again able to look after himself. He was running out of time to bring up something that he’d been mulling over.

“Dana, I’ve been thinking about, umm, your financial difficulties. And I have an idea.”

She’d been giggling over the Abbott and Costello Show from his couch but now gave him her full attention. Thanks to Mulder’s intercession with Mr. Murphy, she was no longer on the verge of eviction, but there was always next month to worry about.

“I’ve got some new colour film stock that I’ve been wanting to try out. And, umm, your hair is such a striking colour. I was thinking…” He bit his lip, apparently losing his nerve.

“Yes?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to be naked. You wouldn’t even have to be undressed. Are you familiar with Suzy Parker?”

“Yes, but Mulder, she’s a professional. I’ve never modeled before. It was one thing when I was going to expose my body – I assume the buyer barely looks at the model’s face, but..”

“Believe me, Dana, men will pay money just to look at your face,” he professed, eager to assure her of what he knew was an incontrovertible fact.

***

She emerged from his bedroom wrapped in his softest blanket. He wasn’t certain what she wore beneath it, but her bare clavicles formed an ivory brace that tapered to her slender throat, where a few small moles sat like inverse stars.

He’d tidied up the living room as best he could while she prepared. There was a light stand topped by a softbox that warmed the air with an opaque, eggshell light. Mulder faced the kitchen counter, fiddling with an impressive array of camera equipment. She got the impression he was letting her settle in before approaching.

She needn’t have worried about her modesty. Once he started to work, Mulder was all business, almost disappearing behind his equipment. He gave her the occasion curt prompt - turn into the light, lower your chin - but for the most part she lay still on his couch as he orbited around her like a satellite. Just once, he reached down to brush her hair back from her face and as his fingers grazed her cheek she held her breath, but he quickly moved back into position and recommenced his graceful dance as the shutter snapped.

After at least a half hour, he began to wind down, and she had the impression of a deep-sea diver coming back to land. With a camera in his hands, Mulder had been transformed, and now he reverted to awkward gestures and halting speech.

“Uhh, Dana, I don’t want to upset you…” he began.

Here it was. He was going to ask her to disrobe so he could take some racier shots. He'd been nothing but a gentleman the whole time she’d stayed at his apartment, but she felt a drop of bitterness that he’d misled her. She began to shrug off the blanket to reveal her black brassiere. He gestured urgently with his free hand for her to stop moving.

“No. No, Dana. I was serious about you not needing to be nude. You’re beautiful, just like this. I was merely trying to find a way to suggest that you imagine your sister, walking through my front door right now. In most of these shots, you’ve got a solemn, almost pensive expression. It’s very evocative, but I wanted to take at least a few of you… enraptured.”

She blushed at the misunderstanding, then lifted her chin, focusing on the darkened stairwell. She pictured Samantha. Elegant, imperious, impulsive Samantha, bursting with a story, waltzing through her day on the wings of make-believe. Her features softened, and her lips curved into a gentle, wistful smile. The shutter clicked, and then they were done.

***

_A riot of gilt-red curls fell loosely from her raised face. Her pelagic eyes questioned the camera, overlaid by the dubious arch of her brows. She glowed with the same ethereal light as a Chinese lantern, something both delicate and eternally wise._


	17. Chapter 17

Dana had been gone for two hours, and his apartment felt so empty that it echoed. He’d long categorized himself as a loner, but now he wondered if he was simply very choosy about the company he kept. To keep himself occupied, he began to process the three rolls of Kodacolor film he’d taken that afternoon. He would never mention it to Dana, but the color stock cost far more than he’d ever make selling her photos. It wasn’t profit that drove him, it was the search for something ineffable, an uncorrupted beauty in a world whose ugliness he couldn’t unsee. His instincts told him he would find it in these photos, just as he saw it in her person.

He lost track of time as he patiently prepared the film in his darkroom, working mostly by feel. Once the film stock was finished soaking in its chemical bath and hanging neatly from the drying cords, he left the room and was surprised to find that it was already late. He’d forgotten to eat supper, and he could hear Dana’s voice chiding him, telling him to take better care of himself. He fixed a simple sandwich, washed it down with cold tea, then began to prepare for bed. His couch, normally so welcoming, seemed strangely forlorn that evening. He glanced down the hallway.

Dana had found some sheets buried in a forgotten box. He lowered himself slowly to the mattress, still aching somewhat from his beating, and was immediately awash in her scent. He wouldn’t have thought that after such a short acquaintance that he’d recognize her smell. Rolling carefully onto his stomach, the cotton teased his bare skin and he let out a bone-deep sigh before falling immediately to sleep.

***

The locomotive whistle startled him awake. His chair shivered and rolled slightly from side to side, and his stomach, still unsettled after the rough Atlantic crossing, clenched in bilious displeasure. Mulder might be the only man alive who could get seasick on a moving train.

He’d convalesced at Second General Hospital in Oxfordshire until August, when the temporary structure began to be broken down to be returned overseas. Once he was taken off suicide watch, he was free to stroll the grounds of the estate that housed the American hospital, and if he could catch a ride into town, the storybook campus of the university. His father had once suggested that he apply to study at Oxford, before the war. Before their falling out. It seemed a lifetime ago.

He rode in a convoy of demobilized Jeeps to Portsmouth, his fellow soldiers full of high spirits and raucous cheer. From time to time he joined in their antics, but he mostly observed the passing countryside, just waking after a six-year winter. It was late summer, yet some optimistic farmers plowed their fallow fields, eager to return to some sense of normalcy and put the horrors of war behind them. 

With his back-pay, he’d purchased a used Leica camera from a small shop in Oxford. Now, he lifted the lens and took his first post-war shots. A draft horse hitched to a plow, as tractor fuel continued to be rationed. A middle-aged woman standing on a rail siding, shielding her eyes with a mottled hand as she gazed down the tracks. A mechanical snake of American military vehicles, winding out of the South Downs towards the sea.

The five days he spent being tossed in his berth on the _USS West Point_ were a time he’d rather not remember. His fellow soldiers teased him about his greenish complexion, then left him to his misery while they played poker and gamboled like schoolboys on deck. Only months before, they had all been cowering in trenches, then rushing at the enemy with bayonets lowered. How many of their fellow men had they collectively killed? And yet here they all were, basking in the sun and behaving as though this were a pleasure cruise, not the last chapter in a savage epic. He envied their chameleon ways. 

After the train ride from New York to Baltimore, he underwent several days of vigourous medical testing at Fort Humphreys to determine whether he was fit to return to civilian life. He called the Fowley home in Fairfax every day, leaving a message with their housekeeper on each occasion. Yes, Miss Diana was aware that he had returned stateside. No, she was not available to come to the phone. Yes, he was welcome to leave another message imploring her to call him back. He dashed off a simple telegram to his mother in Boston, letting her know he was back and when he expected to be discharged. No matter what her shortcomings, she deserved to know her only child had survived the war.

The day of his discharge dawned bluebird bright, a soft September breeze filling the air with Chesapeake brine and slowly dying vegetation. He signed a confetti storm of paperwork, gratefully folded up his uncomfortable uniform for the last time and walked into the morning sunlight wearing his only civilian outfit, which hung loosely from his whittled frame. 

He stood on the sod-green earth and waited. To his left an officer lifted up his wife and spun her around until her practical shoes dropped to the ground and her stocking-clad feet kicked the air. A scrawny boy, no older than nineteen, descended the steps and was greeted by his entire family, his mother alternating between tears and cries of joy while his younger siblings looked on in awe. Mulder wished he had film for the Leica nestling in the duffel bag at his feet, but he finished his last roll onboard the ship, snapping shots of men transiting between two worlds.

After a few hours of standing in place as civilian lives were reborn around him, he picked up his bag, turned north, and began to walk.


	18. Chapter 18

Dana laid down her fountain pen on the desk and arched her back, surreptitiously trying to adjust her brassiere so that it no longer pinched under her arm. This last exam had been the hardest, but she felt confident she’d done well.

She handed her papers to the proctor and made her way into the hallway. It was Thursday, which meant she had a shift at the hospital tonight, but not for another five hours. She should go home and nap or visit the nearby precinct for any news of her sister. Her thoughts drifted seamlessly to Mulder, wondering if he was home and whether he’d developed the pictures they'd taken the past weekend. She felt her cheeks grow warm.

“Miss Scully! A moment, please.” Swallowing a sigh, she turned towards Dr. Waterston.

“Good afternoon, Doctor. Can I help you?” She deeply mistrusted the man, but she pasted on an insincere smile anyway. He was influential at Georgetown Hospital, and she would do well to stay on his good side. Just as long as that didn’t involve laying beneath him.

“Let me be the first to congratulate you, Miss Scully. I’ve been informed that you will graduate with honours. First in your class.”

This was unexpected news, and her forced smile turned genuine.

“I… that’s wonderful to hear. Thank you very much for telling me.”

“Have you given any thought to what you might do next?” They were standing in an alcove not far from the exam room, and Dana tried to avoid the curious and concerned looks of her classmates as they passed by.

“I’ll be applying for a full-time position at Georgetown. My first choice is emergency, but I’ll take anything that’s available,” she replied candidly.

The doctor made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. “You’re far too intelligent to waste yourself on bedpans and autoclaves, Dana. Unless, of course, you intend to utilize your proximity to patients and the medical staff to land yourself an eligible husband.”

The use of her Christian name and the doctor’s rude assumptions set her teeth on edge, but she bit back her indignation. She did take a step backwards and straightened her spine imperiously.

“I can assure you that’s the last thing on my mind, doctor.”

An unctuous smile transformed his typical reserved expression.

“I’m very happy to hear that. You should apply to medical school. I’d be pleased to assist you, in any way that I can. Give it some thought, Miss Scully.”

With that, Dr. Waterston left her, gobsmacked, in the small alcove.

***

“Where’s the little lady?” Frohike greeted.

“She’s on shift tonight at Georgetown Hospital.”

“Beautiful and a career gal. How’d you get so lucky?”

“It’s not like that, Frohike. She came to me for help, so I’m… helping her,” he defended.

“Yeah, you’re a helpful guy. I get it. The damsel is in distress.”

“If she heard you call her a damsel, she’d knee you in the groin.”

Frohike made a swooning gesture, and they both laughed as they settled on the ratty old couch that served as both living room and dining room for the trio. Byers wandered over and shook Mulder’s hand.

“Where’s the Beatnik?”

“He’s at a poetry reading tonight,” Byers replied, and Mulder grinned when Frohike rolled his eyes in disdain. 

“Alright boys, tell me what you know,” he prompted.

“First of all, you have to promise us you aren’t going to run off half-cocked, trying to impress that pretty redhead by taking on these guys solo,” Frohike warned.

“What do you mean by these guys? Do you have information some sort of gang is involved in Samantha’s disappearance?” Mulder leaned forward, ignoring Frohike’s warning entirely.

“Not a gang, per se,” Byers replied. “More like a secret society, with possible ties to organized crime.”

“What?!” Mulder leaped to his feet and began to pace. “Are you serious? She’s just an Irish-American barmaid. What could the Mob possibly want with her?”

“The details are still a bit sketchy, but she’s not the first pretty redheaded woman to go missing under mysterious circumstances in the last few years. Most of them have been working girls. And all of them have shown up dead, bodies dumped like trash.”

Mulder flashed back to Jasmine’s friend Christine, lying in a ditch next to the Anacostia on a cold January night. He closed his eyes and pictured the crime scene photographs he’d taken. Yes, there had been a Gaelic knot pendant on the girl’s breastbone, not surprising on a redhead.

“So, the Irish Mob are abducting pretty red haired women and then killing them,” he concluded. “I still don’t understand why. Murder is going to draw attention, even if they are prostitutes.”

“Not if you have powerful patrons. Men who are in a position to make a murder simply disappear.” This was Byers. Mulder considered him the least paranoid and most reasonable of the group, which made his statement even more shocking.

“Do you have any idea how insane you sound right now? You’re saying that the police are involved in covering up homicides committed by organized crime.”

“No. You’ve misunderstood me,” Byers replied calmly. “I’m saying members of elected government are involved in telling the police to cover up homicides committed by organized crime.”


	19. Chapter 19

Three hours later and near midnight, Mulder crouched in the alley behind the Swampoodle Tavern, wearing black denim jeans, a black turtleneck, black overcoat, and black watch cap. The only glint of light came from the silver frame of his Leica, held loosely between his legs. The alley smelled of piss and rotten cabbage and he’d been crouching for so long that he’d lost feeling in both knees. More than once he’d considered just going home and trying again tomorrow. Or better yet, leaving the investigation to the police, and not a rank amateur such as himself. But if what Byers said was true, the police had no interest in pursuing this investigation. He thought of Dana, her butane eyes lighting up at the thought of her lost sister’s return and vowed to stay for as long as it took.

The back door to the tavern opened and a woman emerged with an overflowing bag of rubbish. She hefted it onto a pile of similar bags next to the door, looked around briefly in the charcoal light, twisted her nose at the unpleasant smell, then disappeared into the gloomy doorway. Mulder rushed forward and stuck his foot next to the jamb before the door could swing fully closed. His heart beat loudly as he tried to breath evenly. He waited another ten minutes, then opened the hinge an inch at a time. The doorway led directly into the kitchen, which was lit by a single bare bulb. No-one was around, so he made his way towards the hallway leading to the front of the tavern. Luck was with him, as the hallway was in total shadow, and yet offered a view of several tables and a corner of the main bar. He stood perfectly still, listening.

“…a bad night, eh Murphy?” an unfamiliar voice was asking.

“Aye, not awful.” There was the sound of coins rattling against metal, probably the cash box, and then the voice he recognized as Murphy’s said, “That’s two hundred.”

“Where’s the rest?” the first voice asked menacingly.

“What rest? You were here tonight. Half the chairs were empty, and these boys drink the cheap stuff until they can’t piss straight. After I pay my staff and replenish my stock, two hundred dollars is half my weekly profit.”

“You must think we’re pretty stupid, Murphy. What about the senator? He and his mates ain’t drinking the cheap stuff, and that back room didn’t decorate itself.”

“Fuck you, Kieran. If it wasn’t for you and your boss, I’d never let that monster near my establishment, and now you want me to pay you for the privilege. You can go to hell.”

There was a tense silence and Mulder imagined the two men staring each other down. He crept forward to the edge of the shadow that occluded the hallway and leaned carefully forward. The two men were standing in front of the bar, near the stairs that led back up to the street. The stranger was taller than Murphy by a good four inches, and younger as well, but Murphy stood his ground. Without looking down, Mulder readied his camera, wanting to get a shot of the two men together. He realized he was running out of time when the younger man finally said “Aye, fuck you too Murphy. I’ll let the bosses handle you later. Just remember who you’re dealing with.”

“Tell your boss I know exactly who I’m dealing with. I’d think that was reason enough to leave me bloody well alone.” The threat obviously had teeth, causing the other man to back down immediately. Acting on impulse, Mulder raised his camera and took a shot. The shutter on the Leica snicked, and both men froze.

“What was that?”

“Damned if I know. It came from the kitchen.”

Murphy made his way quickly towards the back of the tavern, followed by Kieran. The two investigated the empty kitchen. Returning to the hallway, Murphy opened the door to the men’s washroom, checking both stalls. 

“Well?” Kieran asked, clearly perturbed.

“Nothing. It must have been the wind, or maybe a mouse.”

In the ladies’ washroom, Mulder stood on the toilet, hands shaking so hard he could barely hold onto his camera.


	20. Chapter 20

To say that Walter Skinner was surprised to see Dana Scully again was an understatement. It was a pleasant surprise, but he braced himself for another encounter with her lancet eyebrow and her glacial manner. Instead she graced him with a timid smile that warmed even his misanthropic old heart.

“Miss Scully, it’s good to see you again. I trust that you’re well.”

“As well as can be under the circumstances, Captain Skinner. I would like to apologize…”

He held up his hand, forestalling any further expression of regret.

“It’s perfectly understandable. I only wish that I had more news,” he deferred.

“Actually, that’s why I’m here. I have some information for you that I believe may open some avenues to explore regarding my sister’s whereabouts.”

His own eyebrow now rose in surprise. He wasn’t accustomed to receiving job pointers from young female relatives of victims. 

She opened a large envelope and slid a photograph across the surface of his desk. He felt his blood pressure rise. She tapped an unadorned finger against the image.

“I believe you’re already familiar with Mr. Murphy, my sister’s former employer. If I’m not mistaken, this person here is a member of the Irish Mob. He paid Mr. Murphy a very lucrative visit at the Swampoodle the other night.”

“Where? I mean, how did this photograph come into your possession, Miss Scully? Please tell me that you weren’t conducting surveillance yourself.”

“No, but an… acquaintance was in a position to overhear their conversation, and to take this picture.”

He turn the photograph over and saw the red stamp in the bottom right corner of the photograph. A leaping fox, with M.F. Luder embossed below it. He sighed.

“You paid Fox Mulder to covertly stakeout the Irish Mob? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is, for both of you? I could wring both of your necks.”

“I didn’t pay Fox Mulder anything. He offered to help. In fact, he visited the Swampoodle without my knowledge. But I’d say that the results justify the means, wouldn’t you? Now you have irrefutable proof that Mr. Murphy serves more than just cheap ale. This other man in the picture, his name is Kieran, and Mulder thinks that’s he’s a henchman for a larger operator. He mentioned something about a senator who’s a monster…”

“Alright, Miss Scully! You’ve said enough. I don’t want to hear another one of Fox Mulder’s conspiracy theories.”

“Another one…., so you know Mulder?”

“Yes, we’ve had occasion to work together. He’s a good photographer, honest to a fault. I like him, as far as it goes. But he has an unfortunate habit of putting principles before practicality, and I believe it’s cost him dearly before. I’m sorry to hear he hasn’t learned his lesson, and that he’s preying on your desire to locate your sister and involving you in matters that are best left to the experts.”

He watched Dana Scully consider this new information carefully, her lower lip pinched between her teeth. When she looked at him again, there was a light of defiance in her eyes.

“Forgive me for saying so, Captain Skinner, but Mulder has done more to find my sister than your entire department of officers, and for no possible personal gain. If he says there’s a likely connection between elected officials, the Mob, the Swampoodle Tavern, and young missing women, then I’m inclined to agree with him, or at least give his theories fair hearing. As you yourself admit, he’s honest to a fault. I’ll leave this photograph with you, and you can decide what to do with it. I obviously have my own copy. I’ll be in touch.”

And with that, she was gone in a whirl of red hair and rapidly clicking heels. Walter Skinner looked down at the image of the leaping fox and shook his head. Lucky sonofabitch.

He rang for his secretary and handed her Miss Scully’s envelope.

“Get this over to the boys in Organized Crime. I want to hear what they make of it.”


	21. Chapter 21

Life should have prepared him for days such as these. If there was one thing he could attest to, it was that nothing was permanent, and fate loved a good game of musical chairs. Those people playing at stability in their tidy little suburban bungalows placed on green postage-stamp lawns were just marking time until karma shuffled the deck again.

It had happened to him before: one day he’d been the only son and heir to his family’s substantial wealth, and with the flourish of a fountain pen, he was a mere infantry cadet. He’d been cannon fodder, then someone had thrust a camera in his hands, and he became a photographer. He walked into Dachau in the spring of 1945 a relatively sane man, and he awoke weeks later in an English hospital with a psychiatric file and a dream-portal to the future.

This latest change might be the hardest to take, however. It started with his ringing phone startling him from sleep. It was Frohike, calling from a payphone if the background noise of traffic was anything to go by.

“There’s a paper at your doorstep. Turn to page four. We won’t be able to be in direct contact until this gets cleared up. If you need us, leave word through the Beatnik’s trombone player.” Then the line went dead.

Still half asleep, he tumbled up his stairs and pried open the door. Sure enough, a thin paper lay in the dirt just beyond. He recognized the name of the publication. It was one of McCarthy’s propaganda rags, and he’d never paid it much mind. Until he was suddenly one of its targets.

Some time later, he was still sitting in his pajamas, the paper open on his lap, when the phone rang again. It was his contact on the Arlington Police Force. They wouldn’t be requiring his services anymore. They’d mail him his final cheque; don’t bother coming by the station. Click. Ring; Alexandria Police. Click. Ring; Baltimore Police. Click.

To add a little variety to his misery, Captain Skinner of the Washington Police called him directly and invited him to a tiny café where the beat cops sometimes met their informants. Mulder considered whether it was some sort of trap, but treason wasn’t Captain Skinner’s purview. Without bothering to shower or shave, he dressed quickly and walked to the café.

Skinner sat in a deep booth, out of view to most of the other patrons. To Mulder’s surprise, he wasn’t in uniform. He slid in across from the cop, facing the door.

“You look like hell,” Skinner commented, stirring cream into his coffee. Mulder gestured at the waitress and ordered scrambled eggs, bacon and toast with a coffee. If this was going to be his last meal as a free man, he might as well enjoy it.

“It’s not every day you wake up to find that you’re public enemy number one and your means of earning a living has had a crisis of conscience.”

To his bewilderment, the captain looked away guiltily.

“I assume you’re here to deliver similar news?” he continued, after Skinner hadn’t spoken for a minute.

“Yes, of course the Washington Police will be unable to use your services while you are suspected of being a Communist. You know how these things work, Mulder.”

“Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’? If I’m going to suffer the consequences, I’d at least like my day in court. I’m told I look rather fetching in a suit.”

“For Christ sakes, Mulder, use your head! Do you not see what’s going on here? Less than a week after you stick your nose into business where it doesn’t belong, making unfounded accusations about ties between our elected officials and the Irish Mob, you’ve been run out of town on a rail. Does that sound like a coincidence to you?”

“How did you…”

“Dana Scully came to the station. She wanted me to investigate the evidence your amateur espionage supposedly turned up in connection to her sister's disappearance, and she brought me your photo.”

“So you turned me in to the next Alger Hiss? Fuck, Skinner, what did I ever do to you?”

“Lower your voice,” he hissed. “And stop being such a prima donna. If they really thought you were a card-carrying Communist, you’d be getting ripped apart by Hoover and his men right now, not eating a very late breakfast with me. This is a warning to keep clear of Murphy and to leave the search for this girl Sabrina-“

“Samantha,” Mulder interrupted.

“Samantha, then. To leave it to the police force.”

“I still don’t get it, Skinner. If this is a case of one missing girl, why does the Mob care? And if it’s more than that, then why don’t you?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t care, Mulder. I said _you_ should drop it. I’m still exploring leads, but discretely. You’ve been charging around like a bull in a china shop.” Mulder pursed his lips in displeasure. He knew he was onto something, and he knew equally that if he left the job to the police, the next time Dana saw Samantha it would be at the morgue.

“Look,” Skinner added after a pause, “I’ll deny it if you ever quote me, but there is something going on. Something bigger than just this one girl. But to get to the truth, I have to tread lightly.”

“And Samantha Scully? What if time is running out to find her alive?”

Skinner looked at him with pity. “Mulder, she’s likely been dead since the day her sister reported her missing. You know this job. There aren’t many happy endings.”

“I hope you didn’t tell Dana, er, Miss Scully that.”

“No, I didn’t. And neither should you. In fact, I strongly suggest that you leave her alone entirely. She’s lost her sister – don’t make her lose her reputation and livelihood too.”

Mulder looked sharply at the bald captain. He'd spent his morning reeling from the professional consequences of his new notoriety. He hadn't yet considered that there may be personal ramifications as well. As he realized that Skinner was right, he lowered his head into his palms. Skinner stood and fished out three dollar bills, throwing them on the table.

“Breakfast is on me. You’ll need to mind your expenses, now that you’re unemployed.”

The merry bells tied to the café door rang and a damp gust of wind reached Mulder where he sat, still staring despondently into his half-empty coffee cup.

***

As the fall of 1945 lapsed into winter, Mulder had taken to wandering the graphite streets of the Capital at all hours, his Leica hanging around his neck like an albatross. He couldn’t shake the compulsion to bear witness to the dark underside of life, to the facts that no-one wanted to acknowledge until they fell clattering like an ossuary from deepest closets.

It was on one such dismal night that he stumbled, almost literally, into his new profession. He found himself on Wharf Street, a gritty thoroughfare along the Washington Channel of the Potomac frequented by stevedores and pick-pockets. The wind had picked up and he was getting ready to head home to warm his frozen hands around a hot coffee when the fleeing footfalls approached from upriver.

“Police. Freeze scumbag!”

Mulder froze, raising his empty hands over his shoulders. A gunshot detonated behind him, and his whole body braced for the fatal impact. Contrary to popular belief, his whole life did not flash before his eyes. Instead he pictured the future, marching forward into infinity, unaffected by his absence. It was a freeing thought.

Something heavy hit the filthy water beside the concrete seawall with a slap, and he inhaled a lungful of icy air. Not dead, then. A stout officer in a dark blue uniform, his revolver still exhaling a wisp of steam, leaned over the water’s edge and a low whistle escaped his pursed lips.

“Guess that’s gonna put a damper on his plans,” he remarked, lifting his cap and running sausage-like fingers through his thinning hair. He turned to Mulder as though just noticing him. The sodium light glinted off the silver frame of the Leica and a collage of emotions rolled across the cop’s dour face: curiosity, suspicion, alarm and shiftiness.

“You a reporter?”

“Uhhh, no. Just an amateur photographer.”

“Beautiful night to take some snapshots,” the cop said with the heavy-handed irony common to seasoned law enforcement workers.

Mulder deemed it best to stay silent. The smell of cordite still overpowered the usual quayside odour of rotting fish and sewage.

The cop sized him up. Threadbare winter coat, expensive camera, hair too long to be a salary man but too well-shaven to be a subversive. Despite the events of the past minute, Mulder wore the same mildly bemused expression as always.

“Well, since you’re here already, you can make a quick ten bucks. That thing have film?”

Mulder nodded once, wondering what sort of gangland conspiracy he’d stumbled into.

“Good. Our regular guy charges twenty, and he’s usually so blotto he can’t focus the damn shot. Now help me haul this loser onto the street so you can document his fitting end. You do a decent job, there’s plenty more dead lowlifes where this one came from.”

***

_The freezing water had leached any signs of life from the stranger’s face, so that even in monochrome, his skin looked wan. His waterlogged labourer’s clothing hid any traces of blood, but the exit of the cop’s thirty-eight calibre bullet had torn a baseball sized hole in his canvas overcoat, just below his left shoulder. No-one examining the photo would believe the man hadn’t been shot in the back, but Mulder doubted anyone would be looking that closely._


	22. Chapter 22

Casey’s was a venerable K Street institution with a walnut bar rubbed to a glasslike shine by the sleeves of generations of the luckless. Mulder leaned his aching forehead against its cool surface briefly, trying to forget why his viscera hurt, despite his attempt to numb them with scotch.

“Rough day?” the gruff barman asked as he settled another tumbler near his ear. The chime of ice cubes settling drew forth memories of his father, alone in his study, autocratic and formidable even when sober. The association of boozy breath and the sharp sting of a belt across his bared ass made him an infrequent drinker, but if ever an occasion called for dredging up those childhood memories of bruising disappointment and shame, this was it.

“The roughest,” he replied, raising his heavy head high enough to make eye contact.

“Want to talk about it?”

Honestly, he didn’t. Not with some anonymous stranger. He really wanted to unburden himself to Dana, but he couldn’t, and that was the reason he was drinking in the first place. It was a circular problem that his already spinning mind couldn’t resolve.

“Well, right now I’m on trial for my heretical un-American views in the court of public opinion. They call me a pornographer, a corrupter of the innocent, and a closet communist. Even though the very men who have made that claim are some of my best customers. But I angered them when I threatened to expose their sins, just to save the life of one disposable girl. So now I’m unemployed, a public disgrace, and a menace to the one person whose good opinion means anything to me.”

“You’re a red?” the bartender said, having apparently heard only that part of Mulder’s diatribe.

“Yeah, sure. I’m a red. A pinko. A Bolshevik,” he ranted, standing and scanning the surroundings for his coat, which he still wore. He sensed he was about to be unceremoniously ejected onto the street.

“Here, don’t forget your wallet,” the bartender reminded him.

“Thanks. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

“I beg your pardon?” Mulder asked in confusion.

“Nothing. I hate that Senator McCarthy and his whole band of hypocrites. There’s nothing more un-American than persecuting a man for his freely held beliefs. God speed, fellow traveller.” And with that the bartender turned his attention elsewhere, leaving Mulder standing bewildered for a moment before he grinned and made his way out into the street.

It was raining. Of course it was raining. It would be a long, dreary walk back to his apartment without an umbrella. Instead of making his way south towards the Mall, however, he turned north and walked the few short blocks to the co-operative housing project where Dana lived. Had he been planning this all along? The benefit of his level of intoxication was that he honestly couldn’t remember.

He leaned on her buzzer for a long minute before being admitted. His already suspect sense of direction was further compromised by alcohol, and by the time he made it through the warren of stairwells that smelled of Pinesol and hallways that smelled of fried onions to her apartment she was standing in the doorway, observing him with her peculiar brand of concern and skepticism.

“Hellooo, Dana Scully,” he greeted, trying to overcome his pounding heart and plummeting stomach by striking what he hoped was a casual pose leaning on her doorjamb. His depth perception was equally compromised, however, and he missed his mark, stumbling sideways and righting himself before he could collapse into an undignified heap at her feet.

“Mulder, you’re drunk.”

“That is a first-rate diagnosis, Dana. You’re going to make an excellent nurse.”

“I'm pretty certain you haven't had a stroke, though,” she murmured, looking at him as though the answer to an unsolvable riddle lay written on his face. He gazed back at her, equal parts confused and enamored.

“Seriously, Mulder. What are you doing here?”

That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and his plan to come up with a credible excuse while walking in the rain had been thwarted by his intoxication as well. This was why he didn’t drink. It made the precarious balancing act between impulsiveness and foolishness impossible to navigate. In the absence of a believable lie, he did what he usually did: he told the truth.

“I was drinking at Casey’s, feeling sorry for myself, and I met an unlikely ally. I thought maybe the tides of fate were turning in my favour, and, well, I wanted to see you. I need you to understand, Dana…” A door opened down the hallway, and she startled as though struck. 

“You have to leave, Mulder,” she blurted out, almost as though she was afraid of what he wanted to tell her. But that was impossible. Dana Scully wasn’t afraid of anything.

“It’s not true, Dana. I mean, it’s true to an extent, but not the way they say. There’s nothing evil lurking behind the truths I’ve already told you. Yes, I cracked up during the war. Who didn’t? Yes, I make a living taking pictures of half-naked women. You’re one of them, and I’ve never taken advantage. Yes, I’m friends with a number of card-carrying Communists. You’ve met some of them. They’re trying to find your sister. I don’t care what the world thinks of me, Dana, but you…”

“You have to leave, Mulder. Right now. I’m applying for a full-time position at the hospital, and they’ve already warned me that they’ll do a background check on people I’ve been known to associate with, and…”

“Jesus.”

“Just until things quiet down. Until your name is cleared.”

“Haven’t you been listening to me? If they say I’m a Communist, then I’m a Communist and there’s nothing I can do to disprove it. This isn’t going to go away. I’ve already been told my services will no longer be required by the police…” He stopped, not having meant to divulge that detail. Her shoulders slumped with the weight of responsibility.

“Oh, Mulder. This is all my fault. If you’d never met me, if I’d never asked for your help…” Her self-reproach hurt more than any societal backlash.

“No! Don’t say that, Dana. I couldn’t stand it if you regretted knowing me.”

She pulled their heads together with a hand on his crown, resting there until their breathing synchronized. He descended into the liquid depths of her eyes until her face was so close that he lost focus on everything but the fiery corona of her hair. Their lips met gently, cautiously, and then parted. He pressed the memory into the pages of his mind, like a rare specimen he’d despaired of ever finding. Without any further hesitation, they kissed again and again, holding each other upright as the floor spun beneath their feet. Dana finally pulled away with a gasp, her tongue licking away the peaty taste he’d left behind on her lips.

“You need to leave,” she whispered. He nodded wordlessly, walking back down her hallway as it telescoped into an eternity without her.

***

_A tiny beauty mark floated on the milk-white perfection of her skin, just above the bee-stung lips he’d so recently kissed. Her hair framed her jaw with a cinnamon halo, and the bowsprit of her nose was proud and unique. But it was her eyes that centered the shot, the vortex around which her other features coalesced into a singular whole. She was seeing something beyond the veil that hid what wasn’t three dimensional, categorized or easily referenced. Her look called to him, from across lifetimes. It physically hurt him to turn away._


	23. Chapter 23

If there was one thing that his twenty-three years of observing people had taught him, it was that they were profoundly set in their ways. For all its hardships, life in the army had appealed to his fellow soldiers for its sheer repetitive monotony. So when he wanted to find Diana Fowley in the weeks following his discharge, he had a pretty good idea where to look. Before the war, she had her hair done every Thursday afternoon at a salon on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from the White House. Rumour had it that Eleanor Roosevelt also frequented the salon. Mulder didn’t doubt it. Diana liked to be proximate to power in all its guises.

He stood across the street, leaning on a lamppost, until Diana emerged with her hair perfectly styled, a luxurious mink stole around her shoulders protecting her from the chill in the fall air. She caught sight of him immediately, and he watched as she considered whether to acknowledge him or not. With an air of blithe resignation, she crossed the street on her fawn-like legs. In her Italian leather heels, she could look him directly in the eye once she stepped onto the sidewalk beside him.

“Hello, Fox.” She had a breathy alto voice that used to drive him mad with desire. It now sounded manufactured for his benefit.

“Diana.” He waited for the familiar rush of emotions her presence had once released. A craving to belong to someone. A longing for a life of his own making. Instead, he only felt the autumn wind blowing over his exposed skin, chilling him from the outside.

“I wrote to you. I left messages with your housekeeper. I waited for you outside Fort Humphreys for hours. So much for keeping the home fires burning.”

“You were gone for such a long time, Fox. Life moves on.”

“I was at war, Diana. What did you expect?”

“I didn’t expect you to get yourself disinherited by enlisting over your father’s objections. And I certainly didn’t expect you to lose your marbles and end up in some sort of loonie bin, to my very great embarrassment.” When she was angry, the polish of her diction flaked off, revealing the crude substance underneath.

“I see,” he said calmly. “You wanted me to accept a commission bought with my family’s wealth that kept me far from the actual war, while others who couldn’t afford to buy their safety died instead. That would have been the aristocratic thing to do, I agree. And then, instead of witnessing the atrocities of war and “losing my marbles”, as you say, I could have played poker, smoke Gauloises and whored away my days in Liberated Paris.”

“There’s no need to be vulgar, Fox.”

“No need at all. I apologize, Diana. We’ve obviously both been labouring under misunderstandings. You thought I was an unprincipled snob, and I thought you had a conscience. It’s good that we’ve both been set straight. I won’t inconvenience you in the future.” As he turned to walk away, she laid a hand across his forearm.

“Fox…”

Looking down, he noticed her right hand still bore his grandmother’s sapphire ring that he’d given her before shipping out, as a promise of his intentions. It glinted in the falling light. Grasping her hand, he slipped the ring off before she could react and pocketed it in his overcoat.

“There. Now there won’t be any unpleasant reminders of our little folly.” And with that, he turned and walked eastward without looking back.


	24. Chapter 24

The bleating of the telephone had interrupted her quiet scrutiny of the thick envelope full of collated papers, the Georgetown University emblem embossed atop each page.

“Dana Scully.”

“Hello, Miss Scully. This is Melvin Frohike.”

He must have taken her stunned silence as acknowledgement, for he continued.

“There’s been a fire at Mulder’s apartment. He’s alright,” he added quickly, hearing the sharp catch of breath over the tinny line.

“I don’t understand,” she murmured, wrapping the phone cord so tightly around her free hand that her fingers stained purple.

“Mulder, well, he’s a good friend. A good man. And he thinks the world of you, which is a rare endorsement, believe me. He needs someone…”

“Mr. Frohike, I don’t…” she interrupted.

“I’m not suggesting anything unseemly, Miss Scully. He’s going to need a place to stay, and because of his, err, recent popularity in certain circles, it can’t be here.”

“What makes you think he’d accept my help?” she couldn’t help asking, thinking of Mulder's drunken visit and abrupt departure from her apartment the previous night.

“Because he’d be a fool not to. And Mulder is many things, but he’s no fool.”

***

He stood on the sidewalk facing the burning building that once contained his apartment. He imagined the miles of celluloid negatives bubbling and melting away until all that remained was chemical ash. His life’s work, gone.

A gentle hand near his hip made him jump.

“Mulder,” said the familiar voice, and he knew it wasn’t the first time she’d called his name.

“What are you doing here, Dana?” He didn’t want to sound inhospitable, but there were only so many blows he could absorb before his usual equanimity suffered.

“The Three Stooges called me.”

That answer begged a number of questions, but he was too distraught to raise them.

“Do they know how it started?” Dana asked, watching the firemen drag their heavy soot-laden equipment back to the firetruck that blocked Constitution Avenue, its white and red lights intermittently illuminating the devastation on Mulder’s face.

“Mrs. Rosen probably fell asleep smoking on her couch,” he muttered from a million miles away.

“Oh my god, is she…” He shook his head blankly, glancing at the ambulance parked further down the street. She clasped his hand, which was clammy despite the warm spring night air.

“How horrible.” They stood shoulder to shoulder and watched the last of the firemen load up their truck, then drive away. The yard was now cordoned off by yellow tape, and behind that the rubble continued to smolder.

“Come home with me.”

That managed to snap him out of his blank stare, as he looked at her sidelong.

“You kicked me out of your home.”

“Mul-der… that was before your apartment was reduced to ash. And you know I was only trying to protect you.”

He knew no such thing. In fact, he thought she had been trying to protect herself and her family, and he couldn’t fault her for it. That was why he’d left without putting up a fight. He couldn’t understand why she would alter her reasoning, but he wasn’t in a position to turn away unexpected kindness. He quietly accepted, trying to hide his relief.

“Do you have everything?” she asked out of habit, then realized what she’d said.

He grinned ironically, patting his trench coat pockets where his Leica, a handful of negative canisters, a sapphire ring and his wallet constituted all he had in the world. Then her small hand tightened around his, and he amended his inventory.


	25. Chapter 25

They were seated on the overstuffed sofa in her apartment after a hasty and awkward supper, a handspan of decency between them. The easy camaraderie of the Easter weekend she spent nursing him back to health had disappeared in the wake of their hallway kiss the night before. He was distracting himself from remembering the honeyed taste of her mouth by discussing politics. Unfortunately, he’d always had a facility for multi-tasking. 

He wrenched his attention back to what Dana was saying, rather than the way her mouth looked as she was saying it: “… suppose it comes from growing up in a military household. Order and duty were paramount, and they descended from the top. We were raised to believe that power was benevolent, and the best way to serve others was to obey.”

He hated to think that he was causing her to question her worldview.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Dana…” he rushed to interject.

“But it’s not necessarily a good one, either. It leaves us at the mercy of the powerful, and they can use our blind obedience to their benefit. More and more, I find that money is the ultimate motivator of people’s actions, when it should be decency and the public good. But who defines what is decent? And who pays for that good?”

“If we commodify decency, then the rich will insulate themselves from the problems of the poor through the very institutions of society that are meant to defend and support those in need. Imagine, paying to visit a public park. Or to drive along a government-built road. Even President Truman, when he proposed state-funded health care, was labelled a socialist. I don’t think treating the indigent when they are unwell should be a political question. I think it’s a test of our humanity, and I think we’re failing.”

“So you’re a socialist on compassionate grounds,” she concluded.

“Or maybe out of spite.” He had to tell her, but he feared tarnishing her opinion of him as a noble loner, as an underdog. Still, compared to proposing he take her nude photograph or being accused of un-American sympathies, it wouldn't be his worst sin. “Dana, there’s something I need to tell you, something about me you need to know…”

“Yes?” she asked hesitantly.

“My father, well, my whole family, are…, they’re wealthy, Dana.” He snuck a quick look at her, but she was watching him quietly, one auburn brow raised. “Very wealthy,” he added.

“I see. But you’re…” she hesitated.

“I’m not. In fact, if you asked my father, I don’t even exist.”

***

“Ah, good. I was about to ask Krycek to fetch you, Fox. Sit down, son.”

Hearing his father’s forced affectionate tone, Mulder was immediately wary, but had no choice but to sit in one of the two wingback chairs that faced Bill Mulder’s monolithic desk.

“Dean Wallingford tells me you had an excellent Michaelmas Term, and that you’ll be captain of the eight-man boat next year. I trust that pleases you.” 

His father had a particular fondness for rhetorical questions, but in this case, he appeared to expect an answer.

“Yes, sir.”

“I was of course very interested to hear about your choice of Contemporary European History for your Senior Tutorial. Have you given any thought to a topic?”

If Mulder was in any way perturbed by his father’s detailed knowledge of his days at Choate, it did not show. Conversations like these formed the backbone of their relationship since he was in short pants.

“I was considering writing about the Anschluss. Sir.”

Bill Mulder wore a thin mustache, waxed to follow the contours of his upper lip. It flattened now into a straight line of displeasure.

“What is there to say about Anschluss, other than it is the business of the German State, and none of our concern?”

Bill Mulder had sizable investments in German industry. The family business had never interested Mulder as an intellectual pursuit, but ever since he was a boy he was made to understand that when Germany prospered, so did the Mulders. And the annexation of Austria benefited Hitler and his nation greatly.

Mulder braced himself for the unpleasant conversation to come, but was saved by the ringing of the black Leich phone that took pride of place on the desk. He was dismissed by an impatient flick of his father’s hand.

He would later look back on that conversation as the pebble that started the landslide. He’d never seen the world in the same pragmatic, hierarchical light as his father, but he’d chalked it up to their difference in age, in temperament. As Europe slid inexorably backwards into war, he started to wonder whether the two of them belonged to the same species.

Being away at Choate had helped buffer the friction that arose each time they spoke about anything more serious than the weather. With Mulder’s acceptance to Harvard, he moved back into the family’s stately Back Bay brownstone, and contact was far more frequent, and increasingly hostile. When the war broke out in 1939, his mother forbade that the topic even be mentioned while they sat around the antique Biedermeier dining table she’d inherited from her great-grandmother, its glowing cherry surface bejewelled with crystal.

His status as an undergraduate exempted him from the peacetime draft of 1940. Even as Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the United States reluctantly hefted her considerable weight into the fray, he was strangely disconnected from the bellicose fever that swept the nation, like he was living inside a bubble. He read voraciously however, and Harvard fermented intellectual debate like a fine wine. His classmates were the privileged sons of doctors, politicians and industrialists like his father, but their politics were generally anti-Fascist. Through one friend he was introduced to the Harvard Socialist Club, which held its weekly meetings in a third-floor lounge of the Union, the Soviet Union still being a comrade in those days. He attended regularly, but never became a card-carrying member. Much of what was said made sense to him, but he grew suspicious of a group of upper-middle-class men acting as though they understood poverty, when the truth was the closest they got to the poor was when they changed trains at South Station.

Graduating with a baccalaureate in European History in 1943, Mulder’s draft exemption expired. Without his knowledge, his father intervened on his behalf and secured a Class III-D deferment. Apparently, as the sole offspring of Bill and Teena Mulder, his military service would cause undue hardship. The argument that ensued had shaken the Riedel stemware and sent his mother to her room, crying.

Licking his wounds, Mulder took a job in the State Department and moved into the family’s apartment in Washington, DC. He hated everything about the job: the monotony, the antiseptic smell of his office, the daily newspaper reports listing the dead and wounded. The only thing that made it bearable was the chance to spend time with Diana Fowley, a fellow Harvardian who had moved home to Virginia after graduation.

The crisis was precipitated not with a bang, but a whimper. Even looking back, he’d be hard-pressed to explain what finally pushed him past his limits. Diana’s father was an officer stateside, decorated for his service at the front in World War One. If he wanted to marry her, and he was convinced he did, hiding behind a bogus draft deferment was not going to endear him to Major General Fowley. His employment was tedious and meaningless – filing forms in triplicate was not going to save the world from tyranny. And on the day before it happened, he got word that little Phil Padgett, the runt of the Padgett litter, who had grown up hitting pop flies over the fence into the Mulders’ backyard in Boston, had been killed near Naples, Italy, evaporated by a German artillery shell.

_Enlisted today. _Stop._ Reporting for Army basic training on Friday. _Stop_. Give my love to Mother. _Stop.

A return telegram awaited him when he returned from saying goodbye to Diana, flushed and aching and indomitable.

_Leave key with maid. _Stop.


	26. Chapter 26

They parted bashfully in the hallway, painfully aware that they would be sleeping just a few feet apart. Mulder’s designated room had two simple single beds from when it was shared by the two sisters. He considered his smoky clothes, then stripped down to his boxer shorts and sank onto the nearest bed. As soon as he lay his head on the pillow, he knew it had been Dana’s. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the past forty-eight hours.

In his dream, he saw his youthful self, sitting on the floor of an unfamiliar living room. He was watching a television program, but the picture was in colour. A younger girl with long dark braids sat nearby, playing a board game. Sister, said his inner voice, and he knew it to be true.

Suddenly the room began to shake as though an endless freight train was rushing by. The power went out and a piercing blue-white light shone through the window. The girl began to scream his name. Fox! Foxxxxxxxxx!

“Samantha!”

He woke tangled in the sheets and thrashed for a few moments to get free. By the time Dana appeared in the doorway, he was sitting upright in bed, covered in sweat and panting like he’d just finished a sprint.

“Mulder?” she asked tentatively.

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry.” She turned on the bedside lamp and it cast a soft glow on her concerned face.

“Bad one, huh?”

“I guess, yeah. I woke you up?” His heart was slowly calming, and he realized Dana was stroking his arm soothingly. Beneath the sheets he was almost naked. Dana was wearing a pale blue nightgown, and if he glanced down he knew he’d be able to make out her nipples through the bodice. He stared at her face instead.

“You were calling for Samantha again,” she explained.

“My Samantha, not yours.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anyone named Samantha?” she asked, a tiny furrow of confusion between her eyebrows.

“I don’t, except in these night terrors I started having during the war. Something about that experience brought them on: the Holocaust, my catatonia, the psychiatric hospital, I don’t know. It’s like I can see a version of my life that didn’t happen. Or hasn’t happened yet. It’s hard to explain. But in that life, Samantha is my sister, not yours.”

She was silent, and he was embarrassed to have revealed so much. It was bad enough she was harbouring an accused Communist in her home, now she probably thought he was crazy as well.

“Mulder, when the army treated you at their hospital, did anyone recommend hypnosis?”

“You mean like putting me a trance and making me bark like a dog? No, I was already pretty spaced out. They mostly wanted me to forget whatever it was I’d seen that had sent me over the edge in the first place.”

Her hand remained, lightly brushing back and forth through the fine hairs of his forearm. A wash of gooseflesh caused him to shiver.

“At the hospital I witnessed a doctor use hypnosis on a former soldier who was a POW in Japan. His symptoms were awful, far worse than yours, and yet the hypnosis seemed to help him. I wonder…”

“… whether it might help me as well. I guess it’s worth a try. Could you get me the name of this doctor, Dana?”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll come with you to the appointment.”

He was looking at her with such profound adoration that she felt her cheeks redden. She wasn’t certain what it was about this man, but he pulled her outside of herself. She was typically prudent, responsible, and yet being in his presence made her throw caution to the winds.

It hadn’t escaped her notice that Mulder was bare chested with only a thin sheet draped over his lap, but she’d been studiously ignoring the fact in favour of coming to his aid. With the crisis over, her fingers found themselves tracing the long slope of his trapezius muscle.

“It’s, umm, it feels much better,” his voice wobbled. “My shoulder,” he clarified when she looked confused.

“Oh. Yes. Good, I’m glad.”

“You’re an excellent nursssssss…” he broke into a hiss when her hand slid down his chest, brushing an erect nipple along the way.

“Good. I’m, thank you.”

“God, Dana. What are you… You should go back to bed. I’m fine. We can talk more in the morning.”

She shook her head, still exploring his upper body with one hand. It wasn’t the first live male torso she’d witnessed, but it was by far the nicest. His sternum had a light cover of soft brown curls, but everywhere else he glistened a warm bronze in the dim light. 

Her mouth watered, and she was consumed by the urge to taste his skin, which she was certain was equal parts salt and musk, an unfamiliar combination that nevertheless shouted “male” to some instinctive part of her brain. She bent over and licked his suprasternal notch. An agonized groan vibrated beneath her tongue.

Before she could continue her exploration, Mulder dragged her face upward by cupping her skull with both hands. She registered the untamed look on his face in the moment before their mouths crashed together. There was no politeness in this kiss. It demanded, coerced, supplicated and besieged. Far below the turbulent waters of her senses, she was a little afraid of what she’d awoken, but not so afraid that she was willing to stop.

When next she opened her eyes and rose to the surface of consciousness, they were tangled together on the mattress, limbs arranged like a treble clef. The slippery laces holding the bodice of her nightgown were undone and one breast was completely exposed to Mulder's hungry gaze. Her panties were a damp irritation that she itched to discard. A hard ridge of flesh pressed against her hip. She remembered Dr. Waterston’s didactic tone: the erectile tissue, which thickens and plumps, elongating the penis until it reaches a fully erect state.

She wasn’t so naïve as to not realize where they were quickly heading. By contrast, she suspected that Mulder was a worldly man. He’d always behaved with utter propriety where she was concerned, even after she’d disrobed in front of him, but she couldn’t fathom that the opportunity hadn’t presented itself with one of his other models. And then there was the dark-haired woman from his photo album, this Diana Fowley, presumably. Surely, he’d had lovers before, and with the way she was behaving, he probably expected…

“Mulder, I’m a virgin.” She blurted it out in a moment of panic, and then buried her head beneath his chin, embarrassed at her sudden outburst.

Warm hands that nearly spanned her back caressed her from shoulder to hip, over and over again, letting their ardour cool. She tried to imagine the look on his face. Was he amused? Disappointed? She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes, but he was pulling away, forcing her chin upwards.

“Look at me, Dana,” he spoke softly. When she managed to obey, she saw nothing but respect and admiration in his eyes. She swallowed a heavy lump that had risen in her throat.

“Thank you for telling me. And for trusting me. I’d like to repay your confidence in kind, if you’ll allow me.”

She nodded, wide eyed and utterly unsure of what he was about to say. He leaned down so that his lips brushed the fine hairs of her earlobe.

“Me too.”


	27. Chapter 27

The winter after the war ended was the darkest period of his life. While everyone around him seemed hell-bent on picking up the thread of their lives where it left off and carrying on with an almost manic jubilation, he felt trapped in amber, a fossilized specimen with neither a past to cherish nor a future to fight for.

The crime scene work didn’t help, since it mostly brought him into contact with cops, corpses and criminals. Occasionally he’d join the officers for a beer or a coffee, depending on the hour, but most days he retreated to his basement apartment to sleep until dusk and then stare at his phone all night, willing it to ring. It did not escape his notice that the only thing that anchored him to life was someone else’s tragedy.

After a few months of this bleak routine, he finally came to some stark realizations. Diana wasn’t coming back. His parents weren’t going to forgive him. The panic attacks brought on by the war weren’t fading with time, so the only choice he had was to rebuild a new life over the wreckage of the old.

The Smithsonian Museum of American Art had a few galleries dedicated to photography; mostly Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, but there was the occasional work by an avant-gardist like Diane Arbus that made his fingers tingle and his mind buzz with the possibilities that the medium exposed – where art and reality intersected. Better yet, admission was free for veterans. He walked along the icy thoroughfares of the National Mall almost every day to drink his fill, and then retired to his simple dark room to experiment.

Still, film and chemicals were expensive, and he couldn’t bank on a steady profit from other people’s hardship. His outspokenness and stubborn streak made a white-collar government job out of the question. He considered taking to the open road to document the radical changes taking place in society, but something told him people didn’t want to see the truths he would expose.

And then, in late February, a sequence of unrelated events opened a new path. He’d been called by the Alexandria Police to take pictures of a working girl who’d been beaten to death. He tried, as always, to find a glimmer of beauty and an ounce of dignity with which to display his subject, but there was none. The poor woman had been pummeled like a punching bag and then tossed in a heap like a bag of refuse. It was times like these that he hated this job.

As he left to make the long trudge back to his apartment, a young woman called him over.

“Hey, mister, do you have twenty-five cents?” It was the roommate of the victim, another working girl, although she looked barely old enough to drink. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a dime and some lint. Brushing off the lint, he handed her the coin.

“Sorry, this is all I’ve got. It’ll buy you a warm cup of joe.”

“I don’t need coffee, I need a place to stay. The police won’t let me back into our flat.”

“What good would twenty-five cents do you, then?”

“It’s enough for street car fare down to Thirteen and a Half. And a cup of joe.”

Thirteen and a Half Street was well known as a likely spot to find a hooker, sandwiched as it was between Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House. Mulder realized that she intended to turn a trick or two in order to pay for lodging, at seven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, after witnessing her roommate and friend die. He brought her home with him instead.

“At least let me pay you back with a blow, Mr. Mulder,” his new friend suggested, once they were thawing their toes and fingers back at Constitution Avenue.

His sexual vocabulary was limited, but he knew she wasn’t proposing to clobber him.

“No, uh, really Trish. There’s no need, er, it’s my pleasu…, er, it’s fine. And please, it’s just Mulder.” He could feel the tops of his ears burning.

“S’matter, Mulder, dontcha like girls?” Trish was batting her clumpy black eyelashes at him and licking her lips in a lurid parody of seduction. He was starting to regret this entire idea.

“Sure, I like girls just fine. I have a, had a, girl… before the war.”

“Oh, Mulder. You poor thing. Did she die?”

“No, Diana’s just fine. I guess you could say… I did.”

Trish cocked her head in confusion, but she wasn’t dissuaded. As Mulder sat on his sofa, frozen in horror, she began to disrobe. She was bare to the waist and reaching up her skirt to remove her thick woolen hose when something caught his eye: the lines formed by her muscular arm, full breast and flank creased like the bellows of an accordion. There was something almost topographical about their composition.

“Trish, may I take your picture?”

“You mean while we’re doing it?” she asked, now naked except her dingy white underwear.

“No. Well, let’s see.”

Trish went home after two days, and Mulder’s virtue remained intact. He filled rolls of film with pictures, some abstract, others like the pornography that had been passed amongst the soldiers during the war. He knew, intellectually, that the photographs were erotic, but when he looked at them he felt an emotional, not a physical reaction; nothing like the electric thrill that even a glimpse of Diana’s breast or thigh had aroused in him. He wondered briefly if the war had neutered him, but there was nothing impotent about his dreams.

He was pondering these complex reactions when there was a knock at his door. Outside stood a diminutive man with a grizzled beard, eyes that bulged like a goldfish beneath unfashionable glasses, and woolen gloves with the fingers cut off. Mulder wondered how Frohike found any utility in gloves that covered only the bottom half of each hand.

“Hey, Frohike. To what do I owe the honour?”

“We haven’t seen you in a few weeks. I was beginning to worry you’d been corrupted by a darker force and joined the civil service.” They looked nothing alike, but Mulder and Frohike had twin dislikes for the mindless hypocrisy of their government policy.

“That’ll be the day. Actually, I’ve been working on a little side project. If you have a few minutes, I’d like your opinion.”

Frohike followed Mulder into the dark room where the photos of Trish still hung drying. Once his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he let out a low whistle of admiration.

“Very nice. Very nice, indeed. I had no idea you were seeing someone, let alone someone so… naughty.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, you ass, she’s a hooker.”

Frohike took his wireframe glasses off, wiped them against his filthy sleeve, then peered more closely at the nearest images. Mulder had managed to shock him. Up until today, his opinion of his friend was that he had a lot of progressive ideas, but that he was so clean that he squeaked.

“A hooker. Just out of curiosity, where did you find this hooker?”

“Frohike, could you focus, please? I want to know what you think of the pictures.”

“I think they make me want to break open my piggy bank and find this girl, er, lady, er, dame.”

“But are they any good?” Mulder was getting frustrated by his friend’s distraction. Maybe he should have asked Byers, the least prurient of the trio.

“Yeah, they’re really good, Mulder. That’s what I’m telling you. I am a connoisseur of the genre, if I do say so myself, and these are some of the best I’ve seen.”

“The genre?”

“Yeah, you know. Pornography. Racy pictures. Nudies. You could sell these for a lot of money.”

Mulder hadn’t been thinking about the marketability of the shots when he’d taken them. He’d seen them as art, an experiment. But they created an unlooked for opportunity, one that would solve his own financial issues and help his subjects as well, while staying true to his dedication to beauty in all its forms.


	28. Chapter 28

Dr. Heitz Werber’s office was in a non-descript three-story building in the leafy neighbourhood east of Georgetown Hospital. Sitting in the beige waiting room, Mulder’s left leg bounced like a worm on a hook until Dana gently placed her hand over his knee. She was about to tell him to relax when an interior door opened and the man she’d witnessed treating Duane Barry beckoned them to enter.

The office was a riotous hodgepodge of austere furniture, bizarre decorations, and so many books Dana could practically hear the shelves groan. On one of the few bare walls, a blown-up photograph of a blurry disc shape hovering over a pine wood had the words I Want to Believe printed along its margins in bold white font. Dana fought the urge to roll her eyes. Mulder, on the other hand, was clearly charmed as his eyes darted around the room from one obscure object to another. He seemed to have completely forgotten his nervousness of just a moment ago.

“Now, Mr. Mulder, why don’t you tell me why you feel you would benefit from hypno-therapy?” the doctor began with a heavy Germanic accent after they were settled into two over-stuffed armchairs.

“It was Dana, er, Miss Scully’s idea, based on witnessing you treat a psychiatric patient at Georgetown Hospital. I, umm, I experienced something very traumatic during the war, and I slipped into what the army doctors referred to as a catatonic state. When I became aware of my surroundings again, several weeks had elapsed, and I was in a US Army field hospital outside of Oxford in Great Britain. That’s when my, errr, symptoms began.” Mulder was regretting accepting Dana’s offer to be present during his session. If being called a Communist to the general public hadn’t yet scared her off, the next half hour would probably finish the job.

“We’ll get to the exact nature of your symptoms in a moment, but I’d like you to tell me more about this trauma you experienced,” the doctor went on, unaware of the tension between the two young people sitting across from him.

Mulder went on to haltingly describe his wartime experience leading up to his role as the official photographer for the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Unaware that Dana had already seen the photographs hidden in his bedroom closet, he glanced often in her direction as he spoke, trying to gauge her reaction.

Dr. Werber was silent when he finished describing those final horrific hours before he lapsed into catatonia. Mulder wondered if he was reconsidering his suitability as a patient.

“Before we proceed, Mr. Mulder, I’d first like to thank you,” the doctor finally said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Dr. Werber rolled up the starched white sleeve covering his left arm, revealing a crude numerical tattoo.

“Auschwitz,” he stated softly. “I saw your photographs, long after the war. You could have portrayed Holocaust survivors as livestock, composed a mere catalogue of our internment. Instead, you gave us back our dignity. You showed the world that we were people before we were victims.”

Mulder didn’t know what to say, so he simply nodded. Beside him, Dana sniffed loudly.

Laying back on the serge daybed, Mulder focused on the geometric mobile hanging directly above him and on Dr. Werber’s measured voice as he led him through a series of relaxation exercises. He was aware of Dana as a warm presence over his left shoulder, until she slipped away behind an opaque fog.

“Tell me where you are, Fox.”

“I'm at home, at my Mom and Dad's. We're in the den playing a game.

“Are your parents with you?”

“No, it’s just Samantha and I.”

“Who is Samantha?”

“She’s my younger sister. She’s pestering me. She wants to watch her stupid TV show.”

“Tell me what happens next.”

“There’s a noise, like a freight train. It keeps getting louder and louder. The lights go out. The whole room is shaking!”

“Stay calm, Fox. You’re perfectly safe.”

“No! They’re taking Samantha! He’s taking Samantha! Nooooooooo…”

Dana reached forward and grabbed Mulder’s hands, which were braced in front of him as though pulling on the trigger of an invisible gun. His palms were slick with sweat. She looked imploringly at Dr. Werber, begging him silently to end the session immediately.

“Who is taking Samantha, Fox?” the doctor persisted.

“Him. The Smoking Man.”

Ten minutes later, she was sitting next to Mulder, who had calmed somewhat since being brought out of his hypnotic trance by the doctor, but still drew agitated hands through his sweaty bangs.

“But what does it mean, Doc?” he was asking.

“You say these events never happened to you, not even in a memory you might have repressed?” The doctor was clearly intrigued.

“I doubt I could manage to repress an entire sibling. And what about the colour television? The board game that doesn’t exist?”

“It is a puzzle, Mr. Mulder. One I’d like to help you solve. Would you be amenable to another session, perhaps next week?”

Mulder looked at Dana, as though asking for guidance. This man, who had built his life around needing no-one, seemed to look to her for support. It was an intoxicating thought, and a weighty responsibility.

“We’ll be in touch, Dr. Werber,” she said on Mulder’s behalf. After a cordial goodbye, they slipped out into the darkening street. Without any words spoken, they walked back to her apartment hand in hand.


	29. Chapter 29

Mulder had barely eaten, and then retired to his bedroom. When she checked in on him, he was still fully dressed, except his shoes, laying atop the covers with his elegant hands crossed over his belly. His eyes flittered beneath their lids. She felt tenderness pour over her like tepid water.

She left a brief note on the table, grabbed a light coat, and ventured into the dark.

Outside the Swampoodle a dim streetlight cast eerie patterns against a decaying brick wall. She stood in the shadow cast by an enormous oak tree.

It was after midnight when a middle-aged barmaid exited the tavern. The wooden door clattered behind her, locking in the raucous noise of drunken revelry inside. Dana’s feet ached in her impractical pumps after hours spent standing on the sidewalk, but she hurried after the woman as she began to walk north. The buildings facing the street grew more derelict as they walked, and Dana imagined hungry eyes peering at her from behind ratty curtains.

Finally, after nearly twenty minutes, the woman turned into the courtyard of an apartment block. She reached into her purse for her keys, and Dana trotted to catch her before the door snapped closed on her opportunity.

“Excuse me!” Her voice echoed off the cold stone.

The woman turned, startled, then suspicious. She said nothing.

“Are you Monica?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Dana Scully. You worked with my sister, Samantha.”

Something like panic skittered across the woman’s face, and then froze into a mask of indifference.

“Never heard of her. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m very tired after working all day. Good night, Miss Scully.”

Dana slipped her foot into the closing door and pried it back open. The vestibule was cold, with desiccated leaves and crumpled newspapers piled in its drafty corners.

“I know you’re lying,” Dana insisted, and her voice echoed up the dim stairwell. “She told me about you. About how you showed her where the glassware was kept, and how to mix a gin rickey. I know you were the Senator’s favourite, before my sister came along.”

The waning moon shone through the glass panel of the front door and highlighted the bloodless pallor of Monica's face. She hissed.

“Keep your voice down! You have no idea what you’re meddling in. No idea at all. Now go home, before we both go missing as well, Miss Scully.”

“I can’t do that. She’s my sister. My only family. If there’s a chance that she’s… alive, then I can’t give up until I find her. Wouldn’t you do the same, if it was your sister?”

The look on Monica’s face softened, but she still shook her head.

“You don’t understand. There is no saving her; not once he’s got his hands on her.”

“The Smoking Man?”

Monica jolted as though electrocuted. “How did you ….”

“Sam mentioned that the Senator smoked constantly. And then tonight, something happened, and I… I just knew. I knew it was him. He’s the one who has her, isn’t he?”

“You’re going to get us both killed. And that handsome photographer too. Roughing him up, burning down his apartment, calling him a Communist; that’s just an appetizer for these men. By the time they’re finished with him, being a Red will be the least of his problems.”

“That’s why I’m doing this. I’m trying to protect him. To protect all of us. What these men are doing, operating above the law… it’s indecent, and it has to stop.”

“You’re very brave, Miss Scully.” The woman’s entire demeanour had shifted. She was no longer defensive and remote. Instead, there was a tender yearning behind her gaze.

“I’m not brave at all, Monica. They have my sister. They’re threatening the man I love. I’m not brave. I’m desperate.”

“I wish I could help you,” the older woman whispered.

“I wish you could too.”

Dana turned to leave, disappointed but not surprised. It had always been a longshot.

She was partway out the door before something occurred to her.

“Do you know what I just noticed? My sister spoke of your thick Irish accent. She said you reminded her of our Gran. Funny, I don’t hear the resemblance.”

Monica smiled for the first time.

“I was born in Wisconsin.”


	30. Chapter 30

“You did what?!?” She’d woken Mulder when she arrived home, well after two in the morning. He was sitting upright in her bed, still in the same clothing he’d worn to the appointment with Dr. Werber, now rumpled and untucked.

“She was terrified, Mulder. I'm absolutely positive now. It's this Senator who has Samantha, or who knows where she is. We just have to figure out his name and we’ll…”

“We’ll what? Knock on his door and ask for your sister back? Dana, I don’t think you realize who you’re dealing with. These powerful men, they act with impunity. I grew up surrounded by them. They see what they want, and they take it. They don’t benefit from rules, so they break them. And no-one stands up to them. Not without losing.”

His curt dismissal of her efforts stung, and her temper and the late hour conspired to get the better of her.

“Except you, right? Saint Mulder, with your vows of poverty and chastity. Exposing the evils of the world as some kind of penance for your father’s sins. Well she’s my sister, no matter what you see in your dreams. You’re going to have to wait for the next girl to play the thwarted hero.”

His lip curled in something like a snarl, and for the first time she saw beneath his even-tempered exterior to the flaming thing that lived within. Instead of alarm, all she felt was an answering fire, low in her belly. Mulder’s nostrils flared, and he lunged, canting her mouth upwards with a solid tug on her hair.

As before, there was no coherence to her passion. She could feel Mulder’s hot breath as he gasped and moaned against her skin. His body, its suppleness and topography so different from her own, seared her fingertips even as he broke out in goosebumps. She could taste the colours of him on her tongue: the minty green of his throat, the wine-dark burgundy of his muscled chest, the delectable chocolate along the trail of hair that bisected his abdomen.

Kneeling on the floor between his outspread legs, she was surprised to realize they both wore only their undergarments. She had no memory of disrobing. Mulder’s grey cotton boxers bore the clear outline of his ardour, twitching in time to his rapid pulse. She drew a finger upwards from the spongy bulb of his testicles to the arrowed head where it lay near his hip, catching her nail on a minute ridge and drawing an agonized cry from her lover. Liquid seeped through the fabric, and she wondered, was that it? But his body remained tense as a coiled spring, his eyes positively feral. Two strong arms dragged her onto the bed, where she sprawled against his heaving chest.

“Dana, god. Dana. We have to stop, honey.”

“No. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop, Mulder. I want this, want you.”

He groaned, and she could feel every inch of his body shaking from repressed desire. She sucked a nearby nipple into her mouth and bit down, instinctively knowing what action would be impossible to resist.

With a cry, he rolled her onto her back and her legs fell open like a well-read book to a favourite passage. Their hips met with bruising force, and the friction of cotton on cotton threatened to light them both afire. The bulge of his penis was rubbing up and down through the liquid seam of her body. Her hands scrabbled for purchase, pushing the pillows to the floor and finally bracing against the headboard where they found just enough leverage to propel her way into heaven.

She was keening. He was praising. She was blossoming like a hothouse flower, exploding towards a hovering star. He was still, the axis around which she spun in ever-widening circles of colour. She was panting, crying, laughing out loud. He was arching, a golden figurehead riding their storm-tossed sea. She was mute, transfixed by his beauty as he cried out in release. They were both sated, shy, and soaking wet.

“I can’t be that kind of man, Dana,” he explained after they’d changed into clean pajamas and were curled carefully in each other’s arms. “I won’t take something that doesn’t belong to me, and I won’t break the rules, no matter how much I may want to. I gave up nearly everything when I defied my father. My honour is all I have left. It’s the only thing I have to offer you.”

She kissed him over his heart, then extinguished the light.

He held her through the night without sleeping, turning the puzzle of their lives over and over in his mind.


	31. Chapter 31

Dana waited for Doctor Waterston on the patio of a popular restaurant just off Dupont Circle. She could hardly afford to eat there, but she was hoping he would offer to pick up the tab. It was finally beginning to warm, after a dismal spring, and she was wearing her prettiest sundress, the one that Samantha had picked out for her, along with darker lipstick and rouge. She tried not to feel guilty for these blatant manipulations, but she desperately needed something from her former professor, and she was speaking to him in the language he best understood.

The doctor arrived exactly at two o’clock, as she was certain he would. He wore a crisp dress shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and the pleats on his pants looked sharp enough to cut. The kiss he pressed to her stained cheek was just a shade too warm to be friendly, as was the hand that cupped her bare shoulder before ghosting down her arm. Dana shivered, comparing the cool revulsion this man made her feel compared to the ecstatic warmth even an innocent touch from Mulder’s hand engendered. Outwardly, Doctor Waterston was every inch the genteel and powerful man, whereas Mulder hid his sterling qualities behind a wry demeanour and a bohemian lifestyle. The old adage rang true: you really couldn’t judge a book by its cover.

“I was so pleased when I heard you contacted my secretary, Miss Scully,” he remarked after they’d engaged in polite chitchat for several minutes. “I gather you’ve given some thought to my suggestion that you apply to medical school.”

“Indeed. I’ve spoken to the admissions office at Georgetown, and they confirmed that it’s not too late to apply for the forthcoming academic year. I don’t think I have the kind of academic credentials they are looking for, but…”

Doctor Waterston dismissed the thought with an arrogant flick of his fingers.

“Nonsense. With your grades from nursing school, and a letter of recommendation from me, they wouldn’t dare refuse you.”

The waiter arrived to take their order, giving Dana the chance to smother her distaste for this man’s hubris. Sipping on her ice water, she thought of Mulder’s face at breakfast when she’d confessed her desire to become a doctor. She’d been afraid he’d be disappointed that she wanted to pursue a career. Instead, his whole face lit up with delight, and he’d teased her by calling her Doctor Scully for the rest of the morning. She felt her shoulders loosen, and her strained smile become genuine.

“I’m thrilled to hear you say that, Doctor Waterston, as I’ll confess that is the precise reason I invited you here today. With the support of a prominent surgeon such as yourself, I feel my chances are good.”

Her companion puffed with pride. “Your chances will be excellent, Miss Scully. I personally guarantee it. Now, let me have the paperwork, so we can enjoy each other’s company with no further meddlesome business to discuss.”

She slid the envelope from her purse and across the table, and he tucked it beneath his plate. Their soup course arrived, and she pretended to be interested in his story about his triumph at a recent tennis tournament. She cut tiny morsels of pepper steak and listened to him discuss a paper he had written that was being published shortly in a professional journal. Over coffee, he railed against the incompetence of hospital administrators (paid sheepdogs, as he called them), while she desperately tried to make eye contact with their waiter to summon the cheque.

Finally, the interminable meal with over. As she suspicioned, Doctor Waterston wouldn’t hear of her paying for her share, and she thanked him sincerely. As they rose from the table, his hand cupped her back, an inch closer to her bottom than propriety allowed. She stiffened her spine.

“Now, Miss Scully, let me walk you home.”

She startled. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining brightly on a rainbow palette of new Buicks and Chryslers as they glid past. Moreover, she had no intention of letting Doctor Waterston see where she lived.

“That’s very kind of you, Doctor, but it’s not necessary,” she demurred.

“Of course it is! I wouldn’t dream of taking leave of your delightful company so soon. Plus, there is another matter that I want to discuss with you, Miss Scully, but it is best done… in private.”

She saw, with icy clarity, exactly what would transpire. Understanding that she was poor and without family, Doctor Waterston would proposition her. In exchange for his financial support, he would suggest that she become his mistress. If she refused, she could kiss her letter of recommendation goodbye. Why had she not foreseen this situation? Her mind raced, trying to invent any excuse. If only she’d said she had an appointment, or that she was meeting a friend…

“Hello, honey,” a warm, blessedly familiar voice sounded from behind her. She turned in surprise and was greeted with a brief, chaste kiss on the lips. Nearby, Doctor Waterston sucked air between his teeth.

“Are you finished with your business meeting?” Without waiting for an answer, Mulder turned to the man at her side. “You must be Doctor Waterston. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Dana has told me so much about you. Fox Mulder.”

To his credit, Doctor Waterston unfroze his limbs and shook Mulder’s hand politely.

“How do you do, Mister…. Mulder, did you say? Any relation to Bill Mulder?”

Mulder smiled a benign smile. “Yes, as a matter of fact. He’s my father.”

In the social brinksmanship at which the older man excelled, Mulder had just scored a winning blow. Fox Mulder had more wealth and influence at birth than Daniel Waterston could ever gain in a lifetime. Suddenly outclassed, the doctor grew petulant.

“Dana never mentioned she was seeing anyone, let alone someone from such a notable family.”

“Didn’t she? Well, we do guard our relationship rather jealously, don’t we honey? Perhaps we should invite Doctor Waterston and his wife over for dinner one evening, to thank him for his support.”

Dana smiled but couldn’t imagine how to respond to such a suggestion. Fortunately, her response wasn’t required. The point had been to remind Doctor Waterston of the inconvenient fact that he was married and judging by his nervous twisting of his wedding ring, it was a resounding success. Still, the doctor wasn’t giving up without one parting shot.

“Tell me Mister Mulder, man to man, do you not take exception to Dana’s interest in pursuing a career? Don’t you find that it reduces her femininity?”

Now it was Dana’s turn to suck air between her teeth, but Mulder’s hand tightened around her waist in warning before she could lash out.

“Not at all. It would take a weak man to take exception to such an exceptional woman, don't you agree Doctor Waterston?” Without waiting for a response, Mulder continued, “Now if you’ll excuse us, Doctor. It was very nice to meet you. Thank you again for agreeing to write Dana’s letter of recommendation. I hope your family realizes all that you do for your students. Such a selfless use of your influence is truly admirable.”

Thus, completely outmanoeuvred, they left Daniel Waterston standing on a sun-drenched sidewalk with a plain white envelope in his hand. They were a block away before Dana began to chuckle. By the time they reached Rhode Island Avenue, there were tears streaming down her cheeks she was laughing so hard. Mulder simply smirked.

“You are something else, Fox Mulder,” she finally said.

He lifted the palm of his left hand skyward, shrugging, but she could tell he was secretly thrilled by her praise.

“Wherever did you get that suit?” She had been so dumbfounded by the whole exchange, she hadn’t remarked how he was dressed until now.

“I borrowed it from Byers. Told him I had a funeral to attend.” They were both still laughing when they arrived back at her apartment, fifteen minutes later.


	32. Chapter 32

Mulder sat at the kitchen table, cradling his head in his hands. Dana was in the middle of a double shift at the hospital. She’d been taking as much nursing work as she could manage, trying to make ends meet. Meanwhile, he could contribute exactly nothing to their shared household expenditures. His crime scene work had dried up weeks ago. Without a dark room, he couldn’t continue his artistic photography, even if he would consider using Dana’s apartment to take pictures of naked prostitutes. Which for the record, he wouldn’t. After the fire-induced purge of his personal effects, the only two items of value he owned now lay on the table in front of him: his Leica camera, and his grandmother’s wedding ring. He was debating the lesser evil: fencing his livelihood, or his future.

A sharp rap on the door startled him out of his pained ruminations. No-one officially knew that he was living there, and he tried to keep a low profile, out of respect for Dana’s reputation. After a short pause, a stiff manila envelope was slid under the door and footsteps could be heard retreating down the hallway. He picked up the envelope. It was addressed to Miss Dana Scully. The return address was the Capitol Building, care of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was out of time.

Dana came home late that night smelling of soiled linens and antiseptic. Her entire body ached, but at least she’d earned enough to pay June’s rent – and only a week late. She was looking forward to a hot bath, and then curling up around Mulder’s slumbering body. In the days since her meeting with Monica and the passionate encounter that followed, they had limited themselves to fully-clothed kisses. This was in part because any time she saw him, she was either exhausted or rushing out the door, but she also sensed that Mulder wasn’t eager to test his resolve. Still, lying next to him on her narrow childhood bed was pleasure enough.

Entering their room, she was surprised to see Mulder sitting upright in bed, his back braced against the headboard. Her happy smile to find him awake fell from her lips as she observed him. He was paler than the night she’d found him on the floor of his darkroom, his shoulder dislocated.

“Mulder, what is it?”

Instead of answering, he slid an unopened envelope across the sheets towards her. Opening the seal with her nail, she quickly scanned the typewritten pages that lay within. Her breath caught.

“They can’t do this,” she insisted.

“Of course they can. This is what they do. When they realized I wasn’t intimidated their sabre-rattling, they decided to get to me through you.” She had never heard him sound so defeated, and it scared her.

“Then I won’t go,” she declared.

“If you refuse the summons, they’ll find you in contempt of Congress, Dana. Your job at the hospital. Medical school. No, there’s only one answer. I have to disappear.”

“Mulder, no. Absolutely not. You’ve done nothing wrong. You can’t quit now.”

Despite the dire circumstances, he couldn’t help but marvel at this woman’s courage. What a strange, seemingly improbable series of choices had brought them together. She was, without question, the most remarkable person he’d ever met. Which was all the more reason not to allow her to suffer for his beliefs.

“There is another way." Her eyes were focused on the night table, where he’d placed the camera and the ring.

“If we were married, I couldn’t be forced to testify against you.”

***

It was the shortest engagement imaginable. Despite the fact that their problems still hung over them like a pregnant thundercloud, Mulder couldn’t believe his dumb luck. The woman of his dreams had proposed to him, was wearing his grandmother’s ring, and was now sitting next to him in the uncomfortable chairs outside the judge’s chamber, wearing a beautiful cream lace halter neck dress that had belonged to Samantha. “Something borrowed,” she said wistfully, while he tried to unglue his tongue . His grandmother’s sapphire glinted on her ring finger, checking the boxes for both something old and something blue. He had some theories where she was hiding her “something new” and was looking forward to investigating his hunch later.

He, on the other hand, was once again wearing Byers’ borrowed suit.

Dana reached across and settled her hand on his bouncing knee.

“Nervous?” she asked.

He smiled bashfully but shook his head.

“You don’t have to do this, you know. I feel like I coerced you into matrimony.”

He stared at her, wide-eyed. Was she insane? He had found her, his perfect other. After all these years of arriving too late, of witnessing the aftermath, he was finally exactly where he needed to be. He struggled to find his voice.

“Dana, god, listen to me. When you came home, and I showed you that envelope… I’d been trying to choose between pawning my camera, or my grandmother’s ring. And I’d decided on the camera, because one way or another, I was going to convince you to wear that ring. I was planning on clearing my name, before I asked you. You just beat me to it.”

“Mulder! You can’t sell your camera! It’s a part of who you are. Whatever were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that you were working yourself to the bone to feed us and keep a roof over our heads. And that a camera is useless if I don’t have any work as a photographer, nor a dark room. And that good lawyers aren’t cheap, if I want to defend myself against these ridiculous charges. And that I wanted you to be my wife. And that this sapphire is exactly the same colour as your eyes when you’re sleepy.”

Ignoring her carefully applied lipstick and the bustle of secretaries and clerks all around them, Dana lunged towards his mouth until a discrete cough interrupted them. The judge was standing nearby, looking indulgent.

“We usually save that part until after I’m done,” he teased, as Dana blushed and tried to dab the crimson off Mulder’s lips.

Walking into the judge’s chambers, she squeezed his hand. “Don’t you dare sell your camera. I have a plan. Trust me.”

He gazed at her like the love-struck puppy he was. “I do.”


	33. Chapter 33

Mulder wanted to treat Dana to a fancy dinner at Rive Gauche. He wanted to take her out dancing and watch the full drum of her skirt swirl around her shapely calves. He wanted to honeymoon on a deserted island and row her across a lagoon the same shade as her eyes. She was beautiful. She was brilliant. She was dauntless. And she was his wife. 

Unfortunately, as the saying went, their love didn’t pay the rent, so they settled for a romantic walk beside the Reflecting Pool, before retiring to an empty bench and basking in the sun’s warm glow.

“Alright, Mrs. Mulder, what’s the plan?” he asked as he toyed with the newly-placed ring on his finger.

She grinned in a way that let him know she was thinking something naughty, and he cleared his throat and subtly tried to adjust the drape of his slacks. Christ, they weren’t even his slacks.

“I used to go out with this guy, Ed Jerse… it wasn’t anything serious or anything…” she quickly added when he started to scowl. “Just drinks a few times, and I accompanied him one night when he got a tattoo.”

This wasn’t a conversation he’d envisioned having with his newly minted spouse. Given her aforementioned attributes, he could hardly expect to have been her first admirer. He tried unsuccessfully to tamp down his jealousy.

“Jeez, he sounds like a real winner. What was the tattoo?” 

“Rosie the Riveter,” Dana responded, and Mulder rolled his eyes.

“Stop interrupting! Anyway, he took advantage of the GI Bill to go to law school in Philadelphia. The last I heard, he’d passed the bar and was practicing here in town for a firm that specializes in civil liberties cases.”

“And you think he’ll take on HUAC pro bono, just because I’m married to an ex-flame? That sounds unlikely, no matter how great those dates might have been…. Which I really don’t want to hear about on the day of our marriage, by the way,” he rushed to add.

“Jealousy is not a good colour on you, Mulder. And no, I’m sure he’d want a retainer.”

“Which brings us back to the original issue of not having any money…”

“Yes, but I was thinking, what if you sold some more pictures of me…”

“Dana…” he interrupted.

“Only this time…”

“Dana,” he tried again.

“I’ll be naked.”

What Mulder hadn’t mentioned, hadn’t dared tell Dana, was that he’d never tried to sell the colour photos he’d taken of her in the spring. It wasn’t that they weren’t sellable – far from it. As a set, he could have easily doubled the money he’d paid Dana for them. But he couldn’t stomach the idea of Frohike and his ilk drooling over them, and far worse. Instead, he stored them safely in a portfolio in his bedroom closet, until his bedroom closet went up in flames.

Now she wanted him to photograph her completely in the nude and to use the money to pay for his defence. Those racy, obscene, gorgeous photos he could already picture perfectly in his mind’s eye. He was horrified, but god help him he was also unbearably turned on.

***

Mulder tried in vain to dissuade her. He argued he no longer had access to a dark room, and these weren’t the sort of pictures you could get processed at the local film store. Simple, she responded. He could develop them in her bathroom, which had no windows. She couldn’t very well attend medical school if she was recognized as a pornographic model, he said. She’d thought of that too. She would disguise her face. He hadn’t any colour film stock, he tried, desperate. As it so happened, she’d bought two rolls that morning, while he’d gone to the Chinese laundry to have Byers’ suit pressed. Why hadn’t he told her how expensive it was?

By the time they reached her apartment, he was out of arguments. Dana retired to the bathroom to “freshen up”, which he never imagined was a female euphemism for “prepare to get naked”. Mulder wandered around the living room in a daze. The suit jacket was shed, but he paused halfway through unknotting his tie. Clothing was armour, and he knew he would be needing all the protection he could get if he was going to survive the coming barrage to his senses. He settled for unbuttoning the cuffs of his dress shirt and rolling them towards his elbows. Then he busied himself improvising a make-shift studio. A plain white sheet from one of the beds for a back-drop. A hundred-watt light bulb, screwed into a floor lamp, with the lampshade angled just so.

He was fiddling with the knobs on his camera when she re-entered the room. When he finally gathered his nerve and looked up, fear and lust pooled in the back of his throat in equal measure.

She wasn’t naked. In fact, she was swathed from neck to shinbones in a pale green robe. The mask she’d chosen as a disguise was a shade of red that highlighted rather than matched her hair, and from behind it her cobalt eyes shone like jewels. She’d taken the pins out of her hair so that it fell in haphazard curls, held away from her face by two ornate plumes that winged backwards from her temples. Her lips bore a fresh application of crimson lipstick.

“You are, by far, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, crossing the room in two long strides and taking her cold hand in his overwarm one.

She was blushing furiously, her cheeks stained nearly the same colour as her mask.

“Dana, you don’t have to do this. We can figure something else out,” he offered, having about his twelfth round of second thoughts.

“No, I want to, Mulder. When Samantha went missing, you were there for me. You had no reason to care, and yet you did. And it cost you nearly everything. This is my way of paying you back.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she unbelted her robe and let it fall to the floor, thus silencing any further argument.

“Where, umm, where do you want me?”

He didn’t trust his vocal chords yet, so he gestured to the couch. She first sat upright with her knees primly pressed together, then shook her head with a quiet laugh, and leaned back against the armrest like she was his muse and he was a French painter, not a bookish fream from Boston.

Red, red everywhere. The Titian red of her hair. The garnet plumage of her mask. Ruby on her lips and rose across her cheekbones. Blush, god he couldn’t breath, blush crenellations atop the saturated teardrops of her breasts. And there, between the kaolin banks of her thighs…

Her eyes followed him as he adjusted the light, directing her movements with a nod of his head or the tilt of a hand. Frohike refused to believe him, but he never became aroused when he took pictures. His models were surface and shadow, eliciting no more excitement than a beautiful landscape.

This was an entirely different experience. Yes, Dana was beautiful nude - amazingly so - but it was her trusting vulnerability that set his pulse running. It was the sense of partnership that made every act an intimacy. Sweat dripped from his bangs, and his blood sang in his veins. Nearly an hour later, when the last frame was taken, his camera slipped from his nerveless fingers, and he sank to the floor next to the cool marble of her shoulder. Dana’s fingers ran gently through his tussled hair, and soft murmurs rained down from her mouth. It was only as he fought to draw a deep breath that he realized he was weeping.

Dana tugged at his tie, dragging it from under his collar. Next, she carefully navigated each button of his shirt. It was only as her hands reached for his belt that he backed away, standing up to tower over her. The mask slid backwards through her hair. She continued to stare while he shed clothing as though it burned. Now naked, Mulder stood frozen in place, his only movement the lift and drop of his shoulders as he took shuddering breaths, and a minute vibration that seemed to shimmer across his skin like heat over pavement, like a tuning fork had been struck sharply deep within him.

“Mulder, kiss me, please,” she begged.

He toppled onto the couch, and Dana had to mold herself against the cushions to avoid being crushed. Rather than dive into her mouth, however, he began pressing the bridge of his nose against her skin, into her hair, up and down the column of her throat. The moisture from his panting breath collected like dew on the downy hair near her temples and earlobes. He was muttering, murmuring low in his chest so that she couldn’t make out the words, but she understood their meaning perfectly. He was composing a poem and writing it on her body.

Between her medical training and his long but chaste relationship with pornography, they had plenty of theoretical knowledge of sex between them. But theory didn’t account for shaking hands and racing thoughts. Theory didn’t offer an opinion on the best way to match long limbs to short, broad shoulders to narrow. Her medical textbooks spoke of tumescence and penetration and ejaculation, but they were silent on the subject of foreplay and angles of entry.

Fortunately, they were young and patient and in love. Mulder spent a painstaking amount of time exploring her body with his fingers and mouth, until she was writhing beneath him like a candle flame, begging him for something she couldn’t articulate.

There was the question of position, complicated by the fact that they refused to waste two minutes to retire to an actual bed. There was also the business of hands, and how a single pair were insufficient to bear his weight (once it was tacitly understood that he would remain on top), stroke her cheek, clasp her hip, and guide himself home. A brief scuffle ensued, with some nervous laughter and a few failed attempts, until it was finally Dana who took hold of his cock and slipped it gently into the portal of her body.

“Ready?” he asked, breathless, his heart skipping beats like a pebble across a pond.

“Oh, yes,” she answered, smiling up at him, then turning to kiss his forearm as it trembled next to her ear.

A bulbous pressure filled her womb, like sinking your bare foot into mud, only you were the mud. It burned, but nothing could have prepared her for the electric tingle that ebbed and flowed with each increasingly complete thrust. She was torn between watching rapture rise like the dawn over his face and catching glimpses of the root of his shaft as it delved below the horizon of their bodies, where her ocean met his overarching sky.

There was a primal pull calling Mulder again and again into her body, and with each swollen plunge it tugged on him, dragging pleasure up from his balls like a noose. It reminded him - oddly, he would later think - of his first time alone on a swing as a boy. There was the thrill of pumping your body further and further skyward, combined with the feeling that with just one more parabolic effort, gravity would release you from its greedy clasp and you would be lost in the clouds for eternity.

At the vertex of that penultimate thrust, he reared back and left the tender sleeve of her body, barely registering her frustrated cry. Clots of semen sprayed across the russet pelt of her pubis and onto her milk-white skin. Below him Dana’s hips continued to arc, still hunting for relief. As soon as he could master his resolve, five fingers dove into the swollen heat of her folds, finding the hardened nub after a few blind passes, and then set about driving her out of her mind.

Now he was painted in her colours: his skin flushed, bright marks left behind by her nails, and a faint smudge of blood around the base of his penis. They lay in a heated tangle on the ivory canvas of the sheet, looking for all the world like near-drowning victims tossed onto a snowy beach.

“I’ll never stop loving you,” she heard him whisper as they drifted off to sleep, still on the couch. Which made it hard to understand why, in the morning, he was gone.


	34. Chapter 34

He dreamed of a Dana that didn’t exist. In his dream, he dozed fitfully on her sofa, waiting for her to announce some momentous change to their lives. Her eyes, as she delivered a eulogy to her only remaining hope, were bleached pale by tears. He held her as gently as a robin’s egg and as fiercely as a disappearing thought. “Never give up on a miracle,” his dream-self spoke. He knew he’d cost her everything, that she'd paid every conceivable price to stay by his side. Between his arms she transformed to smoke and wafted away, leaving a hollow space that nothing could fill. When he heaved to wakefulness, he could still smell the stale odour of cigarettes.

***

**Dearest Dana,**

**I have to do this. Nothing will be right between us if I don’t own my future, and I cannot allow you to buy it for me with your body. Here are the negatives from last night. They’re yours. If you need money, take them to Larry Fine. He’ll know what to do.**

**I love you, more than you could ever know.**

**Mulder**

***

Dr. Werber’s office looked homier, though no less cluttered, with early morning sunlight streaming through the windows.

“I’m happy to see you again, Mr. Mulder. Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you for fitting me in on such short notice, Doc.”

“You said it was very important. Have your flashbacks worsened?”

His night terrors had in fact disappeared right around the time he’d moved into Dana’s apartment. He hadn’t made the connection until this moment, but he wasn’t about to share the correlation with his hypnotherapist.

“No. But I need to access some very specific memories. I was hoping you could help me.”

“Memories from your nightmares?” the doctor inquired, a quizzical expression causing his wiry eyebrows to protrude.

“Not exactly. You’ll remember that the events I described under hypnosis don’t belong to any part of my life that I consciously recall. In fact, they contradict the facts of my life in many respects.”

“Yes. A very interesting peculiarity. I’ve given it a lot of thought since our last session. What do you think you’re remembering, Mr. Mulder?”

Mulder took a deep breath, then hesitated. He was accustomed to being a social outcast, but he’d never enjoyed being laughed at.

“I don’t think they’re my memories at all, Doc. At least, not the me who’s sitting in front of you.”

The doctor’s eyes sparkled with inquisitiveness. “A past life? Or a parallel universe?” he guessed.

“More like a future life that is somehow tangentially connected to this present one. Right now, I'm hoping my future self will shed some light on a current mystery.”

Falling into a hypnotic trance took less than a minute, perhaps on account of the fact he hadn’t slept well in days. Mulder missed Dana’s steady presence beside him, knowing she would act as both chronicler and interpreter of his bizarre recollections. 

Following Mulder’s instructions, the doctor asked a series of specific questions and made note of his answers.

“What happened to Samantha, Fox?”

“The Smoking Man took her away into the light.”

“Where did he take her?”

“To the dark place. She hates it there. Experiments. Pain, god! So much pain.”

“Where is Samantha now?”

“She’s with the others. In starlight. Hidden in starlight.”

“Very good, Fox. Just one more question. Who is Dana Scully?”

Even in his fugue state, Mulder smiled softly. “She’s the point where all paths lead.”

***

Walter Skinner walked into his favourite diner and scowled. Sitting in his usual booth, casually stirring a cup of coffee, was Fox Mulder. He hadn’t forgotten about the missing girl and Mulder’s impetuous efforts to find her, but he’d managed to push them to the corner of his mind. Until this morning.

“You’re up early, Mulder. I had you figured for a breakfast-at-noon sort of guy.” He settled in across the table and gestured to his typical waitress.

“You’re assuming I’ve actually been to bed.” Mulder kept stirring his coffee. Stirring and stirring, the motion was almost hypnotic.

“You son of a bitch.” Skinner was starring at the younger man’s left hand, which was adorned with a wide silver wedding band through which ran etched Celtic knotwork. It had belonged to Dana’s father and was a little loose, causing it to rap occasionally against the porcelain cup.

Mulder didn’t respond, merely looking smug. Despite the gravity of the situation, he still felt the glow of the previous night radiating off him, like a sun-baked rock long after dusk.

“She was so taken by your Byronic hero routine that she agreed to marry you, is that it? Now, instead of wrecking your future, you’re going to ruin hers too.”

Despite his harsh words, Skinner liked Mulder. He was honourable, empathetic, and on occasion, tremendously funny. But the idea that he went home to the petite redhead with the fiery blue eyes set his teeth on edge.

“With deductive reasoning like that, it’s no wonder you haven’t managed to locate her sister,” Mulder quipped, finally taking a sip of his lukewarm coffee.

“Jesus, Mulder. Are you delusional? That poor girl is dead. Someday they’ll dredge up her bones, or someone will trip over a shallow grave, but she’s gone. Offering her sister hope of anything different is a cruel manipulation, and I never figured you for that type.”

“Listen, Skinner, we can sit around and disagree over the whereabouts of Samantha Scully until the cows come home, but that’s not why I’m here. I need something from you.”

Skinner looked Mulder in the eye, trying to take his measure. There was something different about the man. Fox Mulder had always struck him as an perpetual loner, with an untethered, drifting quality about him. Now he gave off an air of stability, of calm even while a storm raged all around him. He supposed the love of a woman like Dana Scully would do that to a man. He’d never know.

“What, exactly?”

“You’re familiar with Detective Kersh in Organized Crime, I suppose?”

“Yeah, of course. Every DC cop knows Alvin. What of it?” Skinner had a bad feeling creeping over him.

“In exactly two days’ time, I want you to contact him and ask him to run a raid on the old Starlight nightclub.”

“Let me get this straight. You want me to call Alvin Kersh and ask him to scramble a raid on an abandoned drinking establishment with ties to the Irish Mob? You are insane. What the hell makes you think he’ll agree?”

“Tell him I’m calling in my favour.”

“Wait, you know Kersh? How?”

“He was my Lieutenant during the war.” Mulder didn’t add anything further. Skinner got the sense of a deep river of disquiet than ran through those simple words. 

“If you and Kersh are so cozy, why don’t you ask for this favour yourself?”

“Because it has to come through official channels. Because I’ll be busy for the next two days. And because I need you to do one other thing for me.”

Ignoring Skinner’s growl, Mulder continued, “If I disappear, or if… something happens to me, can you please be the one to tell Dana? I don’t want her wondering. She’s lost enough.”

“Anything else?”

“No. Actually, yes. Tell her… I wouldn’t change a day.”

Mulder stood and tossed a quarter on the table for his coffee.

“Wait, Mulder. Why do I get the feeling you’re about to do something incredibly knuckle-headed?”

Mulder grinned, but it was a half-hearted effort. “Because I am. Thank you, Skinner.” With that, he left, and Skinner sat staring at his hands until the waitress arrived with his usual order of rye toast and eggs over easy.


	35. Chapter 35

The metal door slid open just a crack, and a bushy eyebrow peered out. The pale blue eye below it widened, and the door groaned as it opened wider.

“Dana Scully?” Frohike squeaked, smoothing his stubby hands over his rumpled clothing as though he was searching for his glasses, which were perched on his nose.

“Dana Mulder, actually. I’m glad you remember me, Mr. Frohike.”

The short man’s reaction would have been comical in other circumstances. His eyes saucered behind wire-rimmed spectacles and his mouth opened and closed soundlessly like a goldfish. Not having time for explanations, Dana decided to take the initiative.

“Have you heard from Mulder recently?”

That seemed to knock him out of his stupor.

“No, not since… well, certain bogus allegations were made. He’d been keeping a low profile, but I guess you already know that.”

Frohike was staring at her engagement ring, and Dana felt the blood rushing to her face. She could imagine exactly what was going through the man’s mind. She tucked her left hand by her side and cleared her throat.

“He disappeared two days ago. He left a note, but I’m afraid he’s going to try to bring down the men who took my sister all by himself.” She bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

“May I see the note?”

Thinking fast, she prevaricated. “I left it at the apartment. Do you know where he might be, Mr. Frohike?”

Granted entrance to their inner sanctum, these three odd bachelors flit and fumbled around her like mother hens. Frohike gallantly pulled out a kitchen chair, ignoring its rickety frame and stained cushion. Byers found a clean highball glass and filled it with ice water, while the Beatnik quickly stacked dirty dishes into the sink.

“You say he’s gone after the men who took your sister? How does he know who they are?” Byers asked.

"We don't know, not exactly. But we have a pretty good idea a United States senator people refer to as The Smoking Man is involved.”

Byers leaned back so suddenly his chair almost capsized.

"The Smoking Man?!" he asked, looking panicked.

"Yes, that's right. Do you know him, Mister Byers?

It had never occurred to her that these counter-culture misfits would have any connection to legitimate politicians. But then, Mulder had said Byers held some sort of office job within the government, despite his leftist sympathies.

"No, I don't know him. But I know his name. It's Senator Carl Spender of Massachusetts."

“Mister Byers, I could positively kiss you. Now I just need to find Mulder." 

There was an awkward silence as Frohike and the others exchanged meaningful glances. The Beatnik looked dubious, and Byers shook his head gravely.

“Mr. Frohike, if there’s anything you know that would help me find him, you have to tell me,” she pleaded.

Ignoring his friends’ disapproving looks, Melvin Frohike responded to her heartfelt plea.

“There’s one group of people who know every sordid detail in this town, and they happen to be closely acquainted with Mulder as well.”

“The police?” she asked in confusion. 

Frohike laughed, and even Byers appeared mildly amused.

“No, not the police. The working girls.”

***

The iron ingot clouds surrendered their orange glow as Dana made her way towards Thirteen and a Half Street. The Three Stooges had tried every tactic to keep her from questioning the prostitutes herself, but she insisted. Mulder was her husband, and if he was in danger, it was her job to find him. Plus, she felt as a woman she stood a better chance of getting straight-forward answers. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t nervous, though.

Finding a hooker wasn’t going to be a problem, as it turned out. Finding one who’d be willing to speak to her was a different story. Thirteen and a Half Street was a thoroughfare of approximately two hundred yards, sandwiched in the Beaux Art shadow of City Hall, and yet as night fell, it was fairly littered with ‘women of ill repute’, as Dana’s mother would have referred to them. Dana approached several groups but was greeted with haughty sniffs or a torrent of vulgar language. Even in her conservative skirt and trench coat, she was viewed as competition to highly lucrative real estate.

She was preparing to give up when a thickly built woman approached. She towered over Dana in her garish heeled boots.

“Did I hear you say youse was looking for Fox Mulder?”

“Yes, that’s right. Would you have seen him recently?”

“Who’s askin’?” the taller woman asked, eyeing Dana’s sensible pumps and neutral pantyhose.

“I’m Dana Mulder. His wife.” Her heart beat loudly in her chest, afraid to hope.

“Ya don’t say. The Fox Mulder I know don’t have no wife.” The woman gave her one more suspicious once-over, then turned away.

“Wait! I can prove it! His apartment burned down six weeks ago. And, ummm, he loves those silly police procedural shows. And sunflower seeds.” She could tell by the look on the hooker’s face that she was profoundly unimpressed with Dana’s knowledge of Mulder’s television preferences. She was growing desperate.

“He takes photographs and sells them. Of naked prostitutes. But he never lays a hand on them, even when they offer. He sees the true beauty inside of you, but he gets tongue-tied as soon as he’s looking straight at you, and not through the lens. He doesn’t have an ounce of hypocrisy in his body. He’s noble, and stubborn, and, and, he’s the best man I’ve ever known. Please, you have to help me find him!”

Kohl-rimmed eyes softened, and Dana felt a broad palm cup her shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s him alright. Don’t cry, sweetie. I’ll help you find that man of yours. I’m Jasmine, by the way.”

Dana sniffed and dashed tears from her eyes. “Pleased to meet you, Jasmine. Do you really think you can help me find Mulder?”

“Sure, sweetie. I’d be repaying a debt. He helped me find someone I loved, not so long ago.”

The next twenty minutes were surreal. Jasmine enlisted the aid of Thirteen and a Half’s working population, and together they put together a strawman of the last forty-eight hours of Mulder’s whereabouts. Someone had witnessed him speaking with Captain Skinner at a diner the previous morning. One of his former models had spoken to him at her usual corner, answering his questions about a former nightclub known as The Starlight. Another group of hookers pooled their day’s earnings and lent him three dollars so he could purchase a second-hand telephoto lens for his camera.

Dana hugged Jasmine and each of her friends, overwhelmed by their support. Once again, her understanding of societal mores had been turned on its head, but she didn’t have time to absorb the implications. She needed to act fast, if she was going to find Mulder before something awful happened.

“Jasmine, what size shoes do you wear?”


	36. Chapter 36

The rain started soon after nightfall and was now coming down in windblown torrents. Fox Mulder could either open the window of his third-floor hideout and get soaked, or leave it closed and miss catching the photo opportunity he was waiting for. He'd been camped in this abandoned tenement for twenty-four hours now, and all he had to show for his efforts were an empty stomach and a few blurry photos of the occasional Irish mobster. Across the narrow street sat The Starlight. He could just make out an unlit neon sign showing a mountaintop overhung by a crescent moon, above which was written Ascend to the Stars. Whatever vile atrocities were being conducted inside, he had only a few hours to incriminate this Smoking Man before Kersh and his men descended on the place and sent them all scurrying underground like rats.

He checked the focus on his camera for the hundredth time. Movement on the street caught his attention. A hooker was approaching in knee-high leather boots and a skirt that appeared torn and frayed around the hem. What was she doing out on a night like this? There was no way she was going to score a job in this neighbourhood, unless…

A black Packard Patrician turned the corner and pulled up next to the Starlight. As its headlights swept the street, they briefly illuminated the hooker's familiar features. The driver’s door swung open and a burly man emerged. He unfurled an umbrella and held it over the rear door as it opened. Even through the downpour, he could make out the glow of a lit cigarette.

Mulder sat, frozen. His new wife was dressed as a streetwalker and was approaching the door of the Starlight with awkward, stumbling steps. Rain was slapping the side of the tenement where he crouched, soaking his clothing through the open window. The Smoking Man stood just below, preparing to enter the building where he suspected abducted women were being held against their will, but the umbrella was blocking his shot. He felt time slowing, a resinous sensation that amplified the pounding of his heart.

***

Dana tottered down M Street in Jasmine’s boots, which were three sizes too large. She'd torn away the bottom four inches of her knee-length skirt and unbuttoned her blouse as far as her navel. The rain had doubtless swamped her makeup, leaving her looking like someone’s half-dressed doll left out in the rain. She had no idea where Mulder might be hidden, but she was operating on the hunch that he was nearby with his telephoto lens, trying to capture an image that incriminated Samantha’s abductors. How he intended to do that remained a mystery, but she trusted that Mulder had worked out the details ahead of time. Her job was to help him save her sister, by whatever means necessary.

Just then a black car pulled up beside the curb not twenty feet from where she stood. The driver opened an umbrella to protect a trench-coated figure. Even in the driving rain, he was smoking a cigarette. She knew this was the man who had taken her sister. She had to quell the urge to rush up to him and shake him until the truth fell out.

***

Now that he’d experienced both, Mulder was able to observe that blind panic was not dissimilar to sexual ecstasy. His teeth were clenched, nostrils flared, and there was an oceanic roar in his ears. Calamity was approaching like a speeding train, and he was helpless to stop it.

His eyes hadn’t left Dana. She was now standing directly between the Smoking Man's car and the doorway to the derelict club. Glancing up at the nearby buildings, she seemed to be searching for something. A puzzle piece fell into place. As quickly as his suddenly clumsy hands would allow, he primed his flashbulb. Its whir sounded like an air raid siren to his hyper-sensitive ears, but the concussive rain outside drowned all other noise.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, he muttered to himself. In another ten seconds, the Smoking Man would reach the door and be gone.

***

There was only one way to buy Mulder time, and it was the most dangerous option imaginable.

“Hi there, gentlemen,” she purred in what she hoped was a convincing facsimile of a woman used to propositioning men on the sidewalk.

The driver turned towards her, giving her exposed cleavage his full attention. In so doing, the Smoking Man was no longer protected by the umbrella.

“Conor, you fool, get over here!” the older man rasped, dropping his doused cigarette to the pavement in disgust.

The umbrella swung quickly back again, obscuring the Smoking Man from view. She blew raindrops from her lips in frustration. Then, over her left shoulder, there was a brief explosion of white light. She felt boneless with relief. He was out there, watching over her. Her fear disappeared.

“What was that?”, the Smoking Man asked, glancing up and down the empty street for an approaching threat.

“Jus’ lightning,” she slurred, sidling up to the young driver. “You ain’t afraid of a little electricity, are you, Conor?” She lay her hand on the man’s chest, subtly pushing him closer to the Smoking Man.

“Hey! What kinda gentleman are you, anyway? Making a lady stand in the rain while you’re holding a ‘brella. Give that here.” She grabbed at the umbrella, managing to wrest it from Conor’s hand and dancing away quickly before he could react. She could measure time by the frantic beat of her heart. Hurry, Mulder. Hurry. Another blinding flash briefly lit the street, followed by a roll of thunder.

Bony fingers like claws seized her forearm, and the umbrella dropped from her grasp. She found herself looking up into eyes with no light behind them, like portals into an empty room. The Smoking Man leaned towards her face, and she could smell stale cigarettes on his breath.

“You’re very pretty,” he remarked, fingering the wet tendrils of red hair that spilled over her shoulders. “We need another vessel. You’ll do quite nicely.” Dana held her breath, quivering like a rabbit in a snare. The Smoking Man began to push her towards the door of the Starlight.

Just then, the street lit up to the blue and red strobe lights of several approaching police cars. The Smoking Man released her so quickly she nearly toppled over in her high heels. He and the driver jumped back into the Packard, which fishtailed wildly as it fled in the other direction. Before Alvin Kersh and his squad pulled up, Dana had recovered her balance and disappeared into the shadows.

***

Mulder rushed down the tenement stairs and nearly collided with Dana as he sprinted into the adjacent alley, his Leica clutched in one hand.

“Dana, oh my god, what are… how did… whatever were you…?” He ran out of unfinished questions to ask, and removed his coat, helping her slip her frozen arms down the sleeves. Dana threw herself against his chest and refused to let go. She was shaking so hard she could barely stand.

“We’ve got to get out of here. Come on, let’s go home.” 

"Did you get what you need?" she asked without raising her head.

Mulder looked down at her tiny figure, solid and real between his arms.

"Yeah. I've got everything I need."

The pair walked down the rain-slick street, away from the Starlight. A clap of thunder boomed overhead.

***

_The picture was perfectly framed. A grey-haired man, his craggy features emphasized by the play of shadow, stood directly in front of the doorway to the Starlight. Over his head hung the familiar sign, inviting patrons to Ascend to the Stars. To his right was a burly, dark-haired man, well-known to the police. In the foreground was a blur, a tiny wisp of a girl, the improbable spark who set all their lives aflame._


	37. Epilogue

A large brown envelope was delivered to the offices of Senator Carl Spender the day after the events at the Starlight. Opening it, the senator glanced hastily around his opulent office, as though a spy could be lurking behind the thick velvet drapes. A leaping fox monogram on the back of each black and white photograph was the only identification, but the message was clearly understood.

***

Mulder and Dana's summons to stand in front of the House Un-american Activities Committee were quietly retracted. 

***

Captain Skinner called to confirm that three missing women had been found in appalling conditions, held captive in a locked room at the back of the Starlight. No charges had yet been laid. Samantha Scully was not among them. Once he was ready, Mulder’s services as a crime scene photographer were once again required. 

***

A thick package from Georgetown Medical School arrived in the mail. It sat, unopened, on the Mulder's kitchen table.

***

Three months after she disappeared, Samantha Scully re-appeared in the emergency ward of Walter Reed Hospital. No one knew how she got there and Samantha couldn’t say, as she was in an unresponsive coma. Her muscles showed signs of prolonged atrophy, and her bloodwork was incomprehensible. There were whispers of drug use, of pregnancy, of a botched abortion.

They took turns sitting by Samantha’s bedside. She was transferred to Georgetown Hospital, where Dana could drop by when she had a break in her shift. One evening, she arrived to find Mulder reading aloud to Samantha in the soft glow of the bedside light. She smiled wistfully, thinking how strange it was that these two people, so intrinsically linked in her heart, had never truly met.

“What’s that you’re reading,” she whispered, running her fingers through the back of his hair.

“The Man Who Upset the Universe. It’s the latest Asimov novel,” he answered, leaning into her touch.

“Science fiction? Really, Mulder?”

A frail, familiar voice joined their conversation from the hospital bed.

“Not Mulder, Dana. It’s Fox.”


End file.
